Friction in the submissions process has overtaken product and price as the primary factor determining where independent agents place business, according to Applied Systems' 2026 Insurance Agency-Carrier Connectivity Trends survey report.
The survey found 90% of agents have reduced business with a carrier specifically because of submission friction, with re-keying risk data into multiple carrier portals cited as the top pain point by 74% of respondents.
Commercial submission automation ranked as the single capability agents most want from carriers, cited by 79% of respondents, ahead of real-time agency management system data upload at 61% and automated claims loss-run delivery at 44%.
Seventy-six percent (76%) of agents said digital submission and policy servicing experience now matters more to them than commission, with easy quoting and submission, cited by 86%, and speed to bind and issue, cited by 75%, ranked as the top digital experience outcomes agents want from carrier relationships.
The survey found commercial lines-focused agencies experience a noticeably more acute version of the problem than their personal lines counterparts. Commercial-heavy agencies reported re-keying data at a 70% rate compared with 62% for personal lines-focused agencies, and rely far more heavily on email, cited by 49%, than dedicated submission capture software, cited by just 7%.
That gap points to commercial lines submissions carrying more complexity that current carrier technology hasn't fully addressed, leaving agents to bridge the difference manually rather than through automated tools.
Michael Streit, president of Applied Systems Carrier, said the findings validate where the company has focused its own technology investment.
"This year's survey findings confirm that our technology investments are focused exactly where agents say the value lives: experiences that make working with carriers easier," Streit said, adding that more carriers are adopting these connectivity improvements over time.
This year's findings extend a pattern Ivans has documented consistently across its annual connectivity surveys.
The 2025 report found 72% of agents wanted greater carrier automation specifically around commercial submissions, with real-time risk appetite information ranking as the top factor in carrier selection at the time.
The 2023 edition of the same survey found 83% of agents said they would write more business with carriers offering real-time appetite and quoting within their management systems, and that nearly 73% of agencies said they often lost track of submissions altogether without better connectivity tools.
What distinguishes the 2026 findings is the explicit claim that submission friction has now overtaken product and price entirely, a threshold the earlier surveys' framing around "factors influencing carrier selection" suggested was approaching but hadn't yet been reported as fully crossed.
For carriers and MGAs, the survey's core message is that submission technology has moved from a competitive nice-to-have to a primary driver of distribution, meaning underinvestment in commercial submission automation specifically carries a measurable cost in agent-directed business rather than just a service-quality complaint.
The gap between commercial and personal lines automation adoption suggests carriers writing meaningful commercial volume face the most exposure here, since their agency partners are re-keying data at the highest rate while having the least access to dedicated submission software to reduce that burden.
Given that this is the ninth consecutive year Ivans has tracked a version of this trend intensifying, carriers still relying on email-based or portal-heavy commercial submission processes should treat this year's findings as confirmation that the friction is now directly shaping how much business reaches them, not simply a persistent agent frustration that hasn't yet translated into lost placements.
