Is the Insurance Industry Behind the Times?

[nwaite]

Dont worry - there are companies out there fighting the good fight on improving technology for insurance.

We've seen a HUGE shift in the last 5 years of companies offering better and easier to use technology. The efforts of industry groups to shift this has been huge and we've seen many more carriers joining this movement to improve workflows and allow for a better agent / customer experience online. Stay tuned - this industry is slower moving than many - but it has a lot of players that are really sold out for improving it and you'll see even more coming very soon!

 

[adamhawley]

Interesting story. I'll leave the names out. Doesn't really matter.

I was at a conference a year and a half ago talking about IT infrastructure for the company I was working for. The President of my old company told us a story of another giant insurer looking to update their infrastructure.

They consulted with Microsoft, and in turn, effectively offered them a blank check to modernize their system. Microsoft, concerned about the embarrassment of not being able to deliver, turned down the blank check! MICROSOFT, turned down what may have been a billion dollar check!

As the previous super-smart folks have said on this thread, this stuff is much harder than we in the field realize...

 

[Browncoat]

I am recently getting back into the business after a 12 year hiatus. Same company, just working for a different agent. I was SHOCKED to see that after all this time, they are still using an old AS400 system for homeowner's. The entire system is a mess. Everything launches from an updated web app, but you're still forced to work/quote in antiquated systems. It's not as bad as it could be, I guess...but definitely behind the times.

Then again, my office is outdated as well. Old phones, single core processor computers, and 800x600 monitors. I had to bring in a laptop from home, or I would've been screaming all day long.

 

[Agent Ave]

BladeRunner,

Yes, you are 100% that some carriers are way behind on their technology. Having to manually do an application and then fax it in or mail can be very frustrating! I know some of the biggest carriers out their still have black and white quoting software screens. LOL! Funny because technology is so advance and how can the carriers not evolve and be up to date.

Especially being on the independent side, trying to quote lets say 10 plus carriers to find the best rate can take all day. So, agents find a rating quote software to help improve speed. Even after that, you still need to go into each carrier and double check the quote and run reports to find the best rates.

I think from an agent perspective, this is a big issue for agents and staff but the top executives working for carriers are thinking in terms of "insurance revenue" such as claims paid out, how much revenue they made, what demographic customers to go after and on and on. Software improvement for agents, yes, maybe a concern, but most likely not a top priority among other insurance concerns.

If your looking to improve agency daily workflow efficiency, come visit our website and try out our web application at Agenzy Portal - Increase insurance agency daily productivity. You'll find great things there to help you out.

Best,

 

[torkawrefollont]

Don't embarrass yourself.

There are plenty of mainframes out there, they just are different than they use to be. Most are standard PC chips interfaced together to work as one computer and they require very specialized software to run. ORNL and UT are some of the leaders in this. Google is different. It is basically a big distributed dataserver, not a massive number cruncher, its design is completely different.

This is completely off base. I am a computer industry veteran that is only in this forum to do a little research for my retiring Dad's insurance agency.

Mainframes are indeed the dinosaurs of the tech industry. There is nothing that they do that can't be done by modern computers. Modern companies that look for raw computational power, do NOT look to IBM mainframes. If they really can't use a Sun machine (which is unlikely), they will go for an FPGA or GPU based computing chip based machine. ...but 99.99% of applications, even in high-frequency trading, use regular Sun computers.

The only reason mainframes are still around is because old companies can't afford to sift through the code and rewrite it in a modern programming language. It's so old that most of the COBOL programmers have retired and few people even know how to debug problems that come up. During the Y2K scare, big companies had to hire and train Russian immigrants and train them on COBOL just to fix that one problem.

...and COBOL is a horrible programming language. It has no exception handling, non-standard data types, no object orientation, no standard storage, no standard communication protocols, no standard interfaces, and the list goes on and on... It is an painfulmonster to deal with.

Any company that still uses a mainframe, should be embarrassed. Having said that, the reality is that most large banks (including the one I work for) and insurance companies still have some core pieces of the business running on mainframes. The mainframe machine hardware has been upgraded over the years so that today they looks like normal PCs rather than the old huge tape machines - but make no mistake, there are still tiny old little dinosaurs running around inside those machine, each talking about how they'd better finish their batch process on time today so they can make the early bird special at Denny's.

 

[callcreatorplus]

They don't care about improving the technology because only the agents see it and use it. If they spent the money to make the site user friendly then they might as well cut the agent out completely and just let anyone get their own policy online.

 

[mathewsolo]

We are on our way to the most technologically advance agency in the country. We invented a predictive analytical business development software that can use big data to predict who will be your client. Its all about prospecting. We are using google glass to do training videos for our agents and for our clients. We use evernote to go paperless and our financial planning tool is a webbased sophisticated tool that is unparalleled in the industry. We are progressive in our thoughts and our technology and no one in the country has what we have...we are the future of the insurance industry!!!

 

[pcbinsurance]

Yeah sure Matthew. Thanks for your spam in your very first post!

It must be quite exciting to be at the forefront of "the future of the insurance industry"!!

 

[mathewsolo]

What do you mean spam? Not sure what you guys are doing but here is my proof...wheres your's?

check out prospect predict . com

 

[pcbinsurance]

That's just proof that you are here to spam your product.

If you follow the Forum rules, you might be taken more seriously.