Ease of doing business. It’s a tune the industry has been humming for more than a decade. Even as digital technologies and sensibilities carve steady paths across P&C workflows, the song remains the same. No matter who the customer is, where they are, or what their task is, a fast, easy, intuitive experience is good business.
As Cilsy Harris, VP of Business Delivery at The Hanover Insurance Group notes, technology introduction, early adoption and critical mass acceptance (and expectation!) is a process. “Years ago, comparative raters represented a small portion of the new business quoting activity for independent agents. At the time, there was a clear separation between real-time rating and carrier site quoting. Many carriers built bolt-on RTR platforms. However, where we stand today is quite different. Comparative raters are an integral part of the independent agent workflow. It is their natural way of doing business. Now, nearly all account managers will start with some sort of comparative rater and then bridge to the carrier of their choice to complete the new business transaction.”
The Hanover saw the need to respond to their customers’ needs with a technology change. Cilsy told us. “Our selection of AgencyPortal was significantly impacted by the AgencyConnect Integration Kit. For us, the single definition of product rules and the ease of creating a ‘headless’ transaction in the portal from RTR (Real Time Rating) was key. Rather than maintaining a real-time rating platform and a separate agency portal, the single platform solution ensures consistency, quality, and greatly improves speed to market.”
Our carrier customers are continually scrutinizing their customers’ preferences, habits and workflows and developing ways to simplify the experiences. Though the nature of the solutions changes, it is technology—thoughtfully and creatively applied—that remains the most valuable asset they have for aligning their own goals with the ways in which their customers want to do business.
