The Numbers Have It
Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who’s the biggest of them all?
Welcome to Insurance Journal’s first ever “Salute to Independent P/C Agencies Top 100” issue, in which we tried to determine who’s at the top of the heap, the best of the best, the cream of the crop, the blue ribbon winner, et cetera, et cetera.
Actually, what we did is, we invited independent agencies across the country to voluntarily submit an agency profile that included selecting an annual premium range for their company in order to determine our list of Top 100 agencies. Since this is our premier survey, we acknowledge that although we worked hard at getting the word out, it may be that some larger agencies didn’t make our list simply because they didn’t send in their information. To submit a listing for future reports, please visit our Web site at www.insurancejournal.com.
It’s been a fun endeavor contacting and hearing from independent agencies around the United States and the result is a fascinating list. It complements another feature in this edition of IJ, “Market Report: Independent Agency System Shows Growth, Opportunity,” by Madelyn Flannagan, of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, and Jeff Yates, with the Agents Council for Technology. Flannagan and Yates provide an in depth study of the state of the independent agency system complete with market share comparisons between independent agents and brokers, captive agents and the direct response companies.
What’s up with the promise of single entry, multiple-carrier interface (SEMCI)? Not much, it seems. In this issue, we present no less than three separate articles confronting some of independent agents’ biggest technological time wasters, including carriers’ proprietary Web sites and the need to re-enter the same data many times a day in order to communicate with multiple carriers about one account. Titles like, “Still Waiting for True Integration with Carriers,” by Gary Normington, “Real Technology Issues Facing Agents Today,” by Robert G. Slocum, and “Bridging to the Future in Real-Time,’ by Kevin B. O’Reilly pretty much explain it all—we’re not there yet.
An interesting, new addition to IJ is the Web Mail column, in which you get to read what other people say about you. No, that’s not really true—you get to read what they say about the articles we run. Our Web manager, Josh Carlson, has tweaked our site to make it easy for readers to comment on our stories. That has allowed us to compile reader responses to articles from both our Web site and our magazine. Flip to page 51 and check out what your peers are talking about.
Until next time, happy reading!