Be a Crocodile

Keeping up with technology can be mind-boggling, even if you’re not the type of person who calls for tech support every time your computer crashes. After all, the past decade has given birth to the iPod, then the iPhone, then the Kindle, then the iPad and now there’s even “Droids.”

While smartphones – not necessarily robots – may be running our lives today, Robert Hartwig, president and economist for the Insurance Information Institute, said insurers and agencies had better get ready for the next wave of technology. Those who fail to take advantage of technological tools to improve their business will have more difficulty surviving, he said.

Long-lived companies may grow more slowly, but nevertheless they still must be nimble over time. “I guarantee that every one of the 100-year companies operating today uses telephones,” Hartwig said jokingly.

The technology coming down the pike will be just as important as telephones, he said, because it will enable the integration of real-time information such as vehicle and driver information. Essentially, these products will help to better underwrite and price products accurately, which is key to any insurer’s survival. And because this technology is interactive, it will allow consumers to adjust their behaviors to reduce risk – which is what both consumers, governments and insurers want.

Additionally, customers will expect their insurance contacts – whether direct with the carrier or with an independent agent – to be hip with technology. Rather than separate forms of distribution (direct or through an agent), there will be a diffusion, Hartwig said. “[It will be] all one package of distribution: the agent they can use as a resource, and then there’s online, and there’s company resources – and the customer wants all of them,” he said.

Fireman’s Fund’s CEO Mike LaRocco agrees. Future customers may choose to buy insurance over the Internet, but that doesn’t preclude the insurance agent from being the contact and conduit through the new media. Customers may not necessarily want to have a face-to-face visit with an agent, but they may want to open up their laptop and speak to their agent, or use WebEx to get data and information – because the new media fits their lifestyle needs, he said.

Technology has evolved in such a way that agents can be the contact for customers seeking to do business over the Internet, as well as “provide the additional value of, as [customers] grow in their lives and need more advice, being a trusted financial advisor,” LaRocco added.

So although it may be frustrating when your computer and phone don’t do what you want them to do, or you think you’ll never catch up to learning all the features of the latest gadgets, don’t give up. Your goal shouldn’t be to be the fastest growing or the first one at the virtual store. Darwin has shown us that those types of species often become extinct, Hartwig said.

Instead, picture yourself and your insurance agency as a crocodile. The species has changed little since the time of the dinosaurs, survived extinction and is said to be about 200 million years old. And crocodiles accomplished all this not by being the first-adapter, but rather adapting over time.