By Steve Anderson

The Interface Requirements Report, first published in 1990, set the agenda for what we've come to know as company download. The report explained that uploading information from the agency's management system to the company was going to be too difficult a task to accomplish in a reasonable period of time. The difficulty stemmed from the need to include company edits on the agency system. A company edit process allows the information that is input by agency staff into the management system to be validated as accurate and within the carrier guidelines prior to being placed in the carrier's system. Because of the complexity of upload and the limitations of the technology at the time, developers of the report determined that download (moving information from the company system to the agency system) was where resources should be directed initially.

Here we are 13 years later and the question remains: Does download work? Or maybe more accurately: How well does download work?

Why ask those questions? When we talk with agents across the country as we're doing presentations, we hear over and over again that "download doesn't work" or it doesn't work well. Some agents are so frustrated with the existing process they're thinking about turning off download for some of the companies they represent. This becomes even a greater issue as more companies begin to turn off the agent copy of policyholder documents, thus requiring the agency to rely on the downloaded information to answer policyholder questions, or requiring them to rely on the carrier Web site to access accurate policy information.

Please don't get us wrong--download is a good thing. Anything that will reduce the amount of multiple entry that agency staff has to do should be implemented and used. So why would agents turn off download? Let me list several of the issues.

Overwriting data: One of the first problems--and one that seems to be the most prevalent--is the overwriting of data by the download received from the company. If the agency uses its management system to gather and store more information about the client and/or policy than is sent by the company, that data is either lost or moved to a note or memo area, where it's harder to retrieve. This isn't just a carrier problem. Many agencies sabotage their databases themselves by putting information in fields where it doesn't belong. This happens most of the time because there isn't anyplace to put a particular piece of information in the database. And when the download comes from the carrier and does use (or could use) that field, anything already there is overwritten.

All caps: The carrier computer systems are generally older legacy systems. These systems often store data in all capital letters. So, when this information is downloaded, it comes as all caps. This makes it difficult for the agency to use the data in this format, especially name and address information. Some agencies are re-keying this information into upper and lower case so they can use it in correspondence.

There is activity underway to improve this. The Workflow Automation Services (WAS) subcommittee of AUGIE (ACORD-User Groups Information Exchange) has recommended that support for mixed case download be publicized at upcoming AUGIE meetings as well as with carriers and management system vendors. This is something that vendors and carriers will have to work on implementing outside
of ACORD.

Not enough data: In many cases download works well, i.e., data comes from the carrier into the right fields and in the proper format to the agency system. Even in this scenario, there can be a problem because the download doesn't provide all of the information that the agency needs for a particular policy or group of policies. There are frequently holes in rating or underwriting information, for example. This creates a problem for agencies because they don't have all of the information they need to answer all of the questions that might arise on the account. Without complete rating and/or underwriting information, the agency is unable to re-market the policy in subsequent years. The solution is for the agency to manually enter the missing data.

Time delay: The batch store and forward communication process currently in existence creates a time delay in getting the information back into the agency system. This creates a workflow issue for the agency. Suppose you enter information into the carrier system. Can you wait for 24 to 72 hours for the data to be processed and downloaded back into your system? Clients generally need an auto ID card or Certificate of Insurance processed as soon as the coverage is put in force. In cases such as this, the agency will need to enter the data manually because the download doesn't arrive in a timely manner.

So what's the solution? Potentially there are several solutions to this problem. First, carriers and vendors should make sure the existing download process works as well as it can. It does seem that after all of this time and effort the industry should be able to do a better job. Another solution may be the proliferation of some of the new, real-time communication processes between agency systems and carriers. Currently, most of these processes are inquiry only, but the trend is toward building interactive transaction processing also. Following is a brief overview of the some of these new services.

* AMS Services (www.ams-services.com) -- TransactNOW was announced at the AMS Users' Group conference last March. There are now 16 carriers that are able to interact with the TransactNOW service for billing, claims, policy inquiry and policy view.

* Applied Systems (www.appliedsystems.com) -- In addition to Transformation Station (TS), which Applied developed, they have a new service, Web Bridge. The service extends the billing and claim inquiry functionality of carrier Web sites into the real-time workflows already available to agencies using IVANS Transformation Station. The process utilizes the same workflow on the agent's end as similar Transformation Station transactions do in that it's seamlessly integrated within the
agency management system and occurs almost instantaneously.

* DORIS (www.dorisinc.com) -- DORIS is in the process of rolling out Transformation Station functionality to all of its users.

* Ebix (www.ebix.com) -- ebix.com Inc. has created a new direct bill inquiry system, called Ebix Inquiry, that enables any agents, whether they have an Ebix management system or not, to get direct bill status in a few seconds. The service is available to agents at an initial promotional monthly cost of $5 per carrier per agency, with a minimum fee of $25 per agency per month. Carriers will not be charged for this service.

* VANS Transformation Station (www.ivans.com) - TS continues to make progress in the number of carriers that are using the system. Check out the Web site for a current list of carriers licensed to use the service.

* InStar (www.instarcorp.com) -- InStar has added Transformation Station functionality to its system.

* Strategic Insurance Software (www.sisware.com) -- SIS has added WebLink to their system. This allows a user to go to a carrier Web site directly from a client policy. WebLink not only finds and opens the company Web site, but also requests to access a particular policy and view a particular screen--such as payment history, policy declarations, claims updates and more. Currently State Auto, EMC and Progressive are available.

In the future, real-time agents may not even need to bring data back into their systems. But in the interim, download will be with us. As is often the case, agents are blaming the companies for the problems with download and the companies are blaming the agents. The end result is that agents wind up getting dirty data and are stuck with fixing the problems so they can use their databases for marketing campaigns. As is too often the case, there doesn't seem to be an easy industry solution to what appears to be a rather simple problem. *

The author

Steve Anderson has been a licensed insurance agent for more than 20 years. He is president of steveanderson.com, Inc., which provides products and services that help agents maximize profits using commonsense technology. He can be reached at (615) 599-0085. For more information visit his Web site (www.steveanderson.com).