A Special Section Sponsored by Alliance for Productive Technology, Inc.

SHARPENING THE INDUSTRY'S FOCUS

Further SEMCI progress dependent on ongoing efforts

By John Hahn, APT Chairman; Executive Vice President, Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company

I am pleased to report that since last year's Special Section, APT and SEMCI have enjoyed a banner year. Based on the latest ACORD statistics, over 30% of agencies with management systems are doing SEMCI upload, with APT and its participating vendors accounting for over a third of the total. As a result, APT earned the 1998 ACORD Upload Award for Greatest Percent of Growth by a Vendor.

Despite this encouraging progress, the APT Board has recognized five essential issues that must be addressed before SEMCI can realize its full potential as the independent agency system's primary distribution facility. To sharpen industry focus on what needs to be done to clear the path for further SEMCI progress, I would like to identify these issues and share with you some of the views expressed at APT's recent annual SEMCI Conference:

1. Finish change processing integration. First and foremost, the major vendors must finalize their integration of SEMCI change processing facilities and make them available for use this year.

2. Deliver commercial lines upload. Commercial lines SEMCI upload must be implemented. With the benefit of the learning curve from personal lines, there is no reason why this cannot happen quickly. The primary responsibility for this falls upon the vendors, since there is clear evidence that many carriers are prepared to support commercial lines upload as soon as it becomes available in agency management systems. Several carriers, including Atlantic Mutual, Norfolk & Dedham and State Auto, are offering or planning to offer this capability, using the facilities already available in APT's SEMCI Access Module and webSEMCI products.

3. Counter re-emerging proprietary mindset. Those agents and carriers who are committed to SEMCI must redouble their efforts to overcome the proprietary mindset and its dampening effect on SEMCI that have resulted from the latest round of carrier consolidations and the false premise that the Internet can somehow make proprietary interfaces acceptable.

4. Challenge SEMCI imitations. To quote Bob Bailey, State Auto chairman and elder statesman of the SEMCI movement: "Agents and carriers need to be able to identify and challenge 'counterfeit SEMCI' wherever it occurs--this is a task for all of us."

5. Enhance AL3 to its fullest potential. Without diminishing the future significance of the ACORD ObjX Standard, and fully supporting XML as a logical evolutionary path, the industry needs to maximize the return on its substantial investment in AL3, which has proven to be an invaluable workhorse. This task falls primarily to the carriers, working with ACORD and the IIAA's Agents Council on Technology.

At Atlantic Mutual, we are doing our part to meet these challenges. Beyond our plans for commercial lines SEMCI upload, it is our intention to move from a totally proprietary environment to a totally SEMCI environment as quickly as possible. To achieve this objective, we will make use of both APT and Applied software.

Nothing succeeds like success--if we sharpen our focus and overcome the foregoing challenges, there is no question that SEMCI will finally become the predominant form of agency-company interface. It's about time! *