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Patience Yields a New, Improved Agent Portal
October 1, 2008Bel Air, Md.-based Harford Mutual Insurance Co. is a latecomer to agency portals, and that, suggests Steve Fabian, assistant VP for IT, isn't necessarily a bad thing. By arriving late, the company was able to draw on its agents' experience with other portals, and take its pick of mature systems from industry vendors. Coincidentally, the new portal also served as an incentive to update the technology behind some of its existing systems.
Founded 166 years ago in Harford County, Md., Harford Mutual offers a range of commercial property/casualty and workers' compensation coverage through more than 250 independent agents in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Delaware, Tennessee, North Carolina and the District of Columbia. Harford Mutual's direct written premium is around $110 million, and the firm employs about 120 people.
The carrier rolled out its first agency portal, an inquiry-only link, in late 2006. Although it worked well, its limited functionality wasn't in line with what Harford agents had become accustomed to from other companies they represented, and they said as much. "We increased our marketing effort a number of years ago," Fabian recalls, "and marketing and sales began to focus more on improving our agency relationships."
"Most of the feedback we got from agents' as well as from watching industry trends was consistent: We needed to provide the capabilities for online rating and policy submission." This wasn't just an issue of getting new business, Fabian adds; it also was a matter of staying competitive. "Our larger agents already did some in-office comparative rating. They were telling us that it was a necessity in order for them to push more business to us."
Since Harford was getting into the game late, Fabian knew it was important to get its enhanced portal right the first time. "We did not want to start out with a product that we knew we would need to improve," he says. "We wanted to come out with something that was industrial-strength right away, and would be easy to use."
Ease of use was especially important, Fabian notes, "because agents will be drawn, consciously or subconsciously, to something that's easy to use." A design goal for the new portal was to get information to agents quickly, with a minimum amount of data entry. "We built the product so that the critical information to get a quote was part of the initial entry process, so they could get those rates and quotes earlier. Then, if they wished to pursue the business, subsequent screens would fill in the missing blanks."
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Steve Fabian |
Around the same time, Harford started work on its inquiry-only portal and began laying the groundwork for its rating and policy submission system, which it calls RapidWrite. A broad vendor search led the carrier to Boston-based AgencyPort and its AgencyPortal, a Web-based transaction system developed specifically for insurance companies.
"AgencyPort seemed to be a good fit for us in terms of IT architecture," Fabian says. "They also seemed to be flexible with their user interface. Since we already had a presence on the Internet with our agents, we certainly wanted our new online rating and policy submission to be an enhancement to products that they already had, rather than something completely different. AgencyPort's product could be easily customized for that front-end look and feel." In early 2007, Harford and the vendor reached an agreement, and work on RapidWrite began.
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