Bricks and mortar Agents can partner with insurance companies as the distribution system on which their success depends. Imagine an e-commerce platform in which everyone wins new levels of efficiency, and commissions are not marginalized. Let's talk about that platform. The variables of the policyholder's need and the insurer's appetite for risk have been reconciled, historically, by the agent and CSR in concert with the underwriter. The verbal dance that takes place between the CSR and the underwriter is, at this late date, as social and cultural as it is commercial.
Communication is made, trust is established, give and take is engendered, business is written.
It's the way of the insurance world. That doesn't mean that the inefficiencies of multiple conversations, faxes, data entry, and negotiation can't be improved. Clicks and mortar What's needed is an infrastructure that incorporates the old and the new, that maintains the fundamental processes of the verbal dance but puts them on the floor of modern media. Clearly, direct-sell Internet portals cannot achieve that end, since they remove the partners from the dance, delivering the policy directly to the insured. It's unlikely the so-called exchanges will achieve that end, either.