Property/casualty insurance agents—across all age groups and specializations—say their relationships with carriers are more valuable than the technology that carriers put in place to help them, a survey for Carrier Management reveals. Executive Summary For carriers thinking about putting money and resources into technology for agents, policy servicing may be the place to invest, according to a survey conducted by Deep Customer Connections and Wells Media’s Insurance Journal for Carrier Management. But carrier-agency relationships matter more than technology to agents, who generally say that is where carriers should focus.
This is especially true when it comes to technology for servicing claims, according to the Independent Agent Survey conducted by Deep Customer Connections in conjunction with Carrier Management’s media partner, Insurance Journal.
When agents were asked to rate the helpfulness of carrier technology on a scale of 1-7 (1 for “not helpful” and 7 for “very helpful”), carrier technology for claims service scored a 5.0, on average, for roughly 450 respondents.
Not a bad showing given the range for the scale. Still, it was actually the lowest “helpfulness” score for eight categories DCC asked about. Querying agents about the current state of affairs, DCC asked Insurance Journal readers to score the helpfulness of carrier technology for four functions: prospecting and generating sales leads, writing policies, servicing policies, and supporting policyholders with claims. The agents were then asked to score the helpfulness of carrier relationships for the same four activities.