TECHNOLOGY
Fireman's Fund completes national rollout of iCustomer Series
By Catherine Tapia
iCustomer Series strategists Joseph J. Beneducci, senior vice president, commercial insurance, Fireman's Fund Insurance Company (left), and Thomas D. Alteri, director of product development, commercial lines, shown here at the Novato, California, headquarters of Fireman's Fund.
The spirit of innovation is an intrinsic principle at Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, which takes pride in its forward-thinking solutions to challenges.
The 139-year-old Novato, California-based carrier also places a strong emphasis on the relationships it maintains with the more than 4,000 independent agents who distribute its range of products. Add a renewed focus on the insurance-related preferences of the buyers of those products, and the result is the development of a new service: the iCustomer SeriesTM.
The insurer describes iCustomer as a set of Internet tools, information sources and interactive training that targets commercial, middle-market clients in a select group of classes--as well as the producers who go after that type of business. Fireman's Fund identifies iCustomer's target middle-market as customers whose annual premiums do not exceed $250,000. Of the more than $4.7 billion in gross premiums Fireman's Fund wrote last year, about two-thirds of that was commercial insurance. Of that, middle-market represented about a $700 million piece of the company.
The program is based on two main components: a set of CD-ROMs, developed in-house by Fireman's Fund; and a customer-dedicated Web site (extranet site). Agencies that participate in the program receive a kit, comprised of several industry-specific CD-ROMs, as well as a producer disk that introduces the series and outlines information that producers will want to convey to clients.
However, the company's senior vice president--Commercial Insurance, Joe Beneducci, who has spearheaded the project, asserts: "This is anything but a marketing initiative. This is an overhaul and a dramatic change in the customer experience."
With iCustomer, Fireman's Fund strives to make agent/client interaction through the sales, claims and loss prevention stages of an insurance transaction more significant--as opposed to being merely clerical support to the customer.
Brett Borisoff, president of Armstrong/Robitaille Business and Insurance Services, Fullerton, California, (left), discusses the tools which the iCustomer Series provides.
Borisoff believes that once clients become interested in iCustomer and buy into it, they will never leave.
"iCustomer is ... a tool to use while you're advising the customer--that's the beauty of it," says Brett Borisoff, president of Armstrong/
Robitaille Business and Insurance Services, a brokerage based in Fullerton, California.
Once an account is written, the customer is given a CD-ROM appropriate to that customer's class of business. Each CD-ROM provides access to claims and loss prevention materials, safety checklists, and other information and tools. The disks also serve as the doorway to registration for access to even more extensive information, available only on the extranets, which are also separated by industry.
In addition, an exclusive agent extranet site provides a place where agents can order or print marketing brochures as well as access each iCustomer extranet site, online news feeds for iCustomer's individually targeted industries and a Fireman's Fund library of resources.
Borisoff emphasizes that the new service is not something that will interest clients who view insurance as a commodity. However, for any agency wanting to capture non-price-driven, upper-end-middle-market customers, he believes iCustomer provides a good partnership with a good company to go after them.
You say you want a revolution?
Beneducci calls the iCustomer approach "revolutionary."
"Most traditional new products developed by insurance companies are typically created by task forces within companies, pulling together things with limited knowledge of what the customers want," Beneducci says. "We wanted to go out to the actual customer and our agents and invest some time and resources in their opinions as far as what is really valued in the eyes of the customer. And more important, how they see some of that changing, evolving. What do they really want to pay for?"
Tom Alteri, director of product development--Commercial Insurance at Fireman's Fund, points out that the company has been fine-tuning its customer focus for the last couple of years, although the actual development of iCustomer commenced about a year ago. To shed some light on agent and customer perspectives, focus groups were conducted around the country, with Fireman's Fund and non-Fireman's Fund contacts. With the information garnered from those sessions, the iCustomer Series was born.
After initial piloting of the product in California last April, and agent/producer training sessions for the company's Southwest and Northwest regions, iCustomer has been similarly rolled out through its Midwest and Southern regions over the past several months, culminating with the North Atlantic region in July.
According to Beneducci, iCustomer "had to differentiate itself in the eyes of the agents because they are the people who are selling this. If the agents don't recognize those differences, it's going to be difficult for them to then differentiate it with the customer."
Noticeably missing from this rollout has been the fanfare usually associated with a carrier's release of a new product. "I've been a bit of a stickler on the rollout of this program," Beneducci says. "I've seen too many deliverables in our industry where people send things out half-baked. I wanted to make sure our people and our alignment were best-positioned and all of our training was ready to go so this would grow very deep roots."
Fireman's Fund recruited a team to concentrate--region by region--on improving the intensive training process each step along the way. One aspect of that, the company came to believe, was to train agents about the types of things they would not have to worry about doing anymore.
Alteri gave the example of an agent, recently introduced to the Series, who learned an insured had just opened an out-of-state location and needed that state's workers compensation forms. Instead of having to call the company to get the forms to send to his customer, the agent accessed the appropriate forms through the iCustomer disk, printed them out and faxed them over to the customer--all in about 15 minutes. Fireman's Fund says that, once a client gets a disk, iCustomer also puts that type of power in that customer's hand.
Agents weigh in
The agencies selected to participate in the initial training sessions were picked by region, mix of business in the targeted industries, the quality of that business and the relationships maintained with the regions. "Over a period of time, all of our agents will have the Series," Alteri says. However, during the rollout of iCustomer, Fireman's Fund wanted to make sure it would get out first to the type of customers who would use it and the agents who would promote it.
Jay Lipsky, executive vice president of Bolton & Co. in Pasadena, California, participated in some of the first iCustomer training sessions. "Fireman's Fund is the first insurance company that's done the research, tried to identify its target markets and then tried to tailor ... extra benefits, in terms of information, that the insured and the agent can avail themselves of."
Borisoff, also among the first to be versed in the workings of iCustomer, notes that people who are at least somewhat computer-oriented seem to quickly latch on to iCustomer. However, he adds, the product is "not a computer tool. It's a sales tool. That's what I've asked my producers to keep in mind."
The customer CD-ROMs target six industries, with Solutions for Business disks for the hotel, manufacturing, restaurant, real estate, retail and wholesale sectors. Since the rollout began, a seventh disk, for the woodworking trade, has also been developed.
Alteri notes that because different industries have their particular "hot topics," Fireman's Fund decided to address the needs of individual industries with information specific to each on the corresponding CD and extranet site.
Using the real estate industry as an example, he says, "We asked them what their hot topics might be, and mold came up." Consequently, that industry's CD and extranet site include information regarding the mold controversy brewing around the country. For restaurants, food allergies came up, resulting in a 10-minute training topic on food allergies highlighted in the extranet site for restaurants.
Alteri points to the extranet sites as being "the dynamic part of all this," which also include news feeds, industry updates, bulletin boards, Web-based training programs and access to solutions through select vendors with which Fireman's Fund has made exclusive contracts.
One of those vendors is EVault, Inc., a national company that provides solutions for online data backup and recovery. "If one of our customers goes to EVault, they get anywhere from a 25% to a 50% discount on those backup services over what EVault might offer anyone else," Alteri says. "One of the other solutions we have on there right now is loss control-type, safety video training with a company called CLMI ... [at] about a 60% discount from their market prices."
Beneducci emphasizes that despite the insurer's interest in lining up more vendor participation, Fireman's Fund intends to be disciplined about the vendors with which it would form relationships. "The impact and the power that we want to bring the customer has to be significant," he says.
Another iCustomer feature found on both the CDs and extranet sites is an interactive map of the United States which provides hundreds of state-required insurance forms specific to each state--primarily for workers comp. Insureds can click on a state to select a desired form, which will come up in PDF format and can immediately be printed out. There is also a link to online workers compensation claims submission.
Alteri underscores the fact that this type of customer access to information is a time-saver for agents, but it doesn't leave agents out of the loop because the company immediately notifies the agent when a claim form comes in.
In response to customer requests, Fireman's Fund included information on numerous loss-control topics on the CDs and extranet sites. Additionally, there is a customer library located on the extranet sites, with hundreds of loss control-related insights and bulletins, which can be downloaded and printed out free of charge.
Fireman's Fund points out that quite a few transactions traditionally handled via paper can now be processed through iCustomer--without any paper at all. In addition to being able to file a workers comp claim online, there is a link to medical providers for workers comp so customers can nominate one electronically. Losses also can be reported to Fireman's Fund online. Enhancements being developed will allow for electronic filing of auto, property and liability claims, and viewing claims summaries or histories online.
Customers who participated in its focus groups told Fireman's Fund that they wanted a place to go for insurance information when they needed it.
"You can't send out a loss control person every day, and you can't send out somebody to give customers a safety meeting on a monthly basis," Lipsky comments. However, he believes that the iCustomer technology assists agents in making insureds better informed and more in control of the insurance aspect of their lives. "You can give them the tools to help themselves," he says.
Borisoff indicates that it is the extra services that come with iCustomer that will get the biggest push from his producers. "When we couple the loss control information that iCustomer provides with our own loss control department ... there's endless information," he says.
Who's afraid of proprietary systems?
Often, the proprietary solutions released by carriers get a bad rap by those who perceive them as creating more work for agencies.
Lipsky acknowledges, "When carriers come out with something, it frequently is self-serving." However, he emphasizes that what Fireman's Fund has incorporated into iCustomer is strongly directed towards keeping the agent and the insured in the loop in terms of all the information the carrier may develop.
"It's a little more work up-front," Borisoff says. "We have to learn a new process and propose insurance in a slightly different fashion than we're used to." However, he believes that once clients become interested in the program, like the approach and buy into it, they will never leave.
Alteri emphasizes how iCustomer provides "the possibility of co-branding our producers' Web sites with our extranet sites. The response from the agents on that was very positive because it makes them part of the offering. It's not just Fireman's Fund. It's Fireman's Fund in partnership with the agent." *
The author
Catherine Tapia has written about the property/casualty insurance industry, with a focus on technology, since 1999 and most recently served as senior managing editor for the Insurance Journal. Her work has also appeared on such industry-related Web sites as www.NAMIC.org, www.climetrix.com and www.allianz.com.
For Producers
Features
Interactive access through the Internet to Fireman's Fund for:
* Brochures
* Product guide
* Appetite
* Online applications for specialty coverages
* Loss prevention tools and training programs
Simplified claims reporting with:
* Access to claims reporting forms
* Online ability to file workers compensation claims
* Access to current medical providers' listings
* Access to Fireman's Fund's proprietary customer library
* Specialized industry extranet portals
* Hot topics related to specialized, target industries
* Privileged access to preferred customer business services from specialized providers
* Internet access to specialized industry news, updated real-time
Benefits
* 24-hour access for tools and information
* Enhances ability to write and retain quality customers
* An innovative way to provide quality customers with information and access to tools
* Easy online access to valuable information about target industries
* Automated data backup with EVault ensures a secure, reliable solution for storage of invaluable business data
* Improves efficiency by replacing cumbersome manuals and paper files
* Identifies future and emerging causes of losses customers can address
* Increases communication with customers
* Helps producers save on servicing time
* Better positions the producer as a specialized sales resource for
targeted industries
For Insureds
Features
* Internet access to Fireman's Fund
* Access to claims reporting forms
* Online workers compensation claim filing
* Current medical providers' listing for workers compensation
* Loss prevention tools and training programs
* Real-time, specialized industry news
* Specialized industry Web sites, including online training
* Hot topics and discussion boards
* Customer library
* Referrals to preferred customer business services from specialized providers
* Brochures
* Product guide
Benefits
* The set of tools simplifies insurance
* Access to:
* Tools and information 24 hours a day
* Quick and easy answers to many insurance-related and loss control questions
* Industry-specific information to help manage exposures and assist in loss prevention
* Valuable information about the customer's industry
* Claims and other important forms, eliminating the need for cumbersome paper files
* File claims quickly and accurately
* Communicate with industry peers through online bulletin boards
* Secure valuable business data in case of loss with automated data backup through EVault
* Obtain beneficial video safety training programs from CLMI
Source: Fireman's Fund