One Alberta broker disagrees that technology is harming insurance – arguing the point that the industry needs to keep up with the times or go the way of the dinosaur.
Thom. C.J. Young, the CEO of Lundgren & Young Insurance Ltd. in Calgary, Alta., shared these thoughts in his Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta blog‘Young’s Stuff’ this week, taking issue with Ontario broker Mike O'Grady's views shared in a recent Insurance Business article:
Old-School Broker?
This story falls under the heading of “saying things people don’t want to hear.” Recently in
Insurance Business, a broker was lamenting that technology was destroying customer service and driving our clients away from the broker product delivery model.
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The story wandered a bit and didn’t really seem to focus on the root cause of the broker’s angst, which seems to me to be less about the impact of technology on the customer service model and more about the imposition of technology on the broker by companies demanding their information in a technical standard different from the broker’s operations.
People who follow my writings on the subject of technology and its use in our business know that I’m not much for listening to people whine about having to do things a different way to improve the process. In my own operations, we always were looking for a technical advantage over our competitors through the use of better and more efficient technology. In reality, much of what we were trying to accomplish “back in the day” was stymied by the archaic systems in use by the insurers at that time and their seeming inability to agree on an industry technical standard that would allow brokers to need to operate only one system for all their markets.
In Canada, we’ve never quite achieved this. (continued.)
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The insurers praise the technical superiority of their systems, and their IT people proclaim the technical advantage of their ability to mine data over that of their competitors’ systems. Regardless, at the end of the day, a broker representing 10 different markets is faced with the need to understand at least nine different systems and the absolutely dumb process of inputting data into the broker’s own database and then transposing it into the insurers’.
The process is inefficient from the broker’s perspective, but the companies are sure happy that they’ve been able to off load the bulk of their data processing in their different systems onto their brokers. The expense and inefficiencies aren’t directly the companies’. Brokers need to be competitive with other brokers, so they are all forced to play this silly game.
Of course, some brokers don’t believe that technology is helping them in their process.
In a rural market with a defined territorial presence, you may well be able to resist a lot of technological change for a while, but the reality is that your clients are all using internet technology to communicate. They are getting e-mails on their iPads, telephones, and computers simultaneously. They are dealing with their product suppliers in this manner and are going to demand that you provide them with this service no matter how “old school” you might think you are.
The first rule in sales has been around as long as two people have been trying to convince another to choose one product over their competitors: “Give the client what the client wants!” Those that resist this principle rule will soon find their market share dwindling.
A broker recently lost a client when his client called to ask why he hadn’t responded to the e-mail the client had sent. When the broker replied “I haven’t been back to my office yet,” the client said, “I haven’t been in the office for a couple of days. What’s that got to do with it?” (continued.)
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The world is constantly changing. Competition drives improvement. To compete, you need to be on the edge of technological change and using it to better your service, not resisting it. That’s how I see it, anyway.
The issue of insurers offloading their data processing functions onto the brokers is something for another article. What’s at stake? “If you make me do your work and save you money, I expect you will share those cost savings with me by increasing my revenue.” Isn’t that the fair process?
Talk about saying things people don’t want to hear.
To see the original article, 'I say things people don't want to hear,' click here.
To see what brokers had to say about the article, click here.
