Agent Portals: An Ongoing Effort

Agent portals, new technology a decade ago, are commonplace today among property/casualty carriers. Despite the fact that agent portals are a mature technology, they're the second-most-cited IT projects planned for this year among insurers, according to a study by Novarica, insurance and banking consultants in Boston and New York.

Most portal technology in use today is fairly modern, says Martina Conlon, principal in Novarica's insurance practice. Unless their portals are really old, few carriers are replacing them; rather, insurers are enhancing them. "They're rounding out the features they include in their portals across those lines of business," Conlon says. "They may be adding upload or they may be adding online document access or things like that. They're enhancing their existing portals, adding functionality and adding lines of business."

An example of this refurbishment trend is Safety Insurance. The Boston P&C carrier primarily sells personal auto coverage, and has expanded into homeowners and commercial auto insurance-both growing parts of its policy portfolio.

Formed in 1980, the publicly traded company does most of its business in Massachusetts, though in 2008 it started selling in New Hampshire. Safety's direct written premiums in 2010 came to $604.9 million, up 8.1% from 2009. It is the second-largest private automobile carrier and third-largest commercial automobile carrier in Massachusetts. In 2010, Ward Group ranked Safety Insurance among the top 50 P&C insurers for its financial performance, and Safety has also been recognized by The Boston Globe as one of the 100 top-performing companies in the state.

"We try to be competitive on a number of fronts," says Jim Berry, Safety's VP of insurance operations. "We sell products through independent agents, and we focus very intensely on them. We try to give them competitive products and pricing, and provide good service. But one thing we spend a great deal of effort on is being easy to do business with. That's a huge advantage to doing what we do."

Berry credits the company's agent portal for much of Safety's success with its roughly 600 agents. Today, virtually all its auto and homeowners business comes in through the portal. But the other side of the story is what happens in Safety's back-office systems. The agency portal front-ends the carrier's policy administration system, and with some exceptions in its commercial lines, writing new policies or adding endorsements passes automatically through the system. "It is straight-through processing," says Berry. "If an agent sits down and wants to issue new business, he can go right through the coverage-selection page and be done with it on the spot."

The great majority of agent portals among property/casualty carriers are homegrown. A 2010 study by Novarica found that nine major North American vendors of P&C portal software shared fewer than 200 installations. The numbers-of both vendors and installations-have gone up a little since the consulting group published the study, according to Conlon. But still, "most carriers have a portal in place that is homegrown, that's built in Java or in .NET," she says. "That is by far the most common technology out there."

Safety started out with a homegrown portal, too, back in the late 1990s. "Many of our agents were struggling with the whole Internet thing and how to leverage it," Berry recalls. In response, Safety created a basic portal, The Agents Virtual Community-Berry calls it "training wheels for the Internet." "That initial path was about bringing together Internet content that was relevant to the agents," he says.

Although the initial portal did its job, both portal technology and the company's expectations for it were changing. "The missing piece-and the one most vital for us-was the ability to do transactions," Berry continues. Safety was still entering new business and endorsements itself. There were quality issues and meeting agents' needs was a struggle, and that sent the carrier looking for a better solution.

Around the same time it rolled out its first agent portal, Safety began a search for a new policy administration system, and ultimately chose a solution from Computer Sciences Corp. Soon afterward, it swapped its Agents Virtual Community for CSC's portal, Agency Link. "That was part of the bigger solution, using both the policy admin as well as the front end. We started with new business, then moved into policy changes." Agency Link proved popular with agents and effective for Safety. Berry estimates agents have been performing virtually all their auto coverage transactions with Safety via Agency Link for the past eight years, and virtually all their homeowners transactions for the past five.

Switching to Agency Link was just the beginning. Over the years, Safety has made a number of changes to the portal, with a view to making it easier for its agents to use on the front end and to automate more processes on the back end. "Our first iteration, way back in the day, was just a heads-down, data-entry vehicle," Berry says. "Our biggest leap forward was when we first created bridging capability."

The ability to bring in data from other sources is an important feature for agents, he notes. "When you read the agents' trade press, their biggest beef is the duplicate information, having to enter things twice. I really can't emphasize enough how powerful Agency Link is as a bridge solution, so the agents only have to do a given data point once. Our agents have really rewarded us for being able to do that."

One important source of third-party information for Safety's agents is WinRater, a comparative rating system from a local company called Boston Software. WinRater lets agents compare rates for auto insurance from 24 carriers in Massachusetts. The agent creates a quote in WinRater, then exports it to Agency Link. "Agency Link cleans it up for them, processes it up into the policy admin system, and if the agent wants to issue the policy, it kicks off a mini-cycle and the policy is processed right on the spot," says Berry.

Another significant change to Safety's agent portal came when the carrier linked it directly to its host system, to initiate rating on the host so the company could issue policies in real time. And, "the latest change we've made is that very recently, we created the ability to actually issue the policy as well," Berry comments. "Agents can either print off the coverage selection page right on the spot-so it's a one-touch-and-done type of environment-or if they prefer, they can e-mail it out to their insureds or deliver it any way they like."

What's ahead for Safety's agent portal? "As an industry we've become ever-more reliant on data," Berry answers. "The portal's ability to bring in data from third parties, store it and evaluate it is very valuable. I see it as a solution going forward."

Bob Mueller is a freelance business writer based in Grand Beach, Mich.

 

What Your Agent Portal Should do Now and in The Future

What kind of functionality should a good agent portal support? A 2010 study from Novarica called "Best Practices in P&C Agent Portals" notes that agents tend to place business with carriers that are easy to work with. The faster and more completely the carrier can respond, the more likely it is to get its agents' attention. The report recommends carriers consider the following functions when designing or upgrading their portals:

• Make your portal robust. Overly basic portals can damage your reputation with agencies. Include ease-of-use features like data pre-fill, address validation and automatic calls to third-party data providers.

• If underwriting feedback is required, get it to agents early in the process. Share underwriting guidelines with agents on your portal.

• Invest in straight-through processing. Agents like the speed and simplicity of STP, and carriers-despite the high up-front cost-can save a lot of money using it.

• Support different agency business methods. A good portal should be able to upload business from agency management systems and comparative raters, and also download information from the portal to the agency management system.

• Plan for direct consumer quoting, but develop strategies to ensure this doesn't conflict with your agents' needs, and ultimately with their loyalty. Use technologies that will let you share components of agent and consumer portals.

• Consider agency principals' needs separately. Although agents value ease-of-use features, principals' priorities are likely to lie with commission downloads and reporting functions.

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