I was interested to read the lead story last week on Insurance Insight with a spotlight on Italy and its progress with e-commerce.
The recent pre-election regulatory changes have called for the creation of technical standards in the communication between insurance companies and intermediaries, with regards to the quotation process, policy issuance, MTAs, renewals etc.
The thinking behind this is in part to assist in the transition from a single tied agent model to a multi-tied/broker model as it will allow an intermediary to get comparative quotes from several insurers as part of a single quote process.”
This move is welcomed by brokers, but it seems to be less welcomed by insurers, particularly those with the highest market share and potentially most to lose from the creation of market standards allowing business to flow from insurer-to-insurer more easily. There is talk of the legislation being resisted.
As direct customer B2C online aggregation already exists in Italy, albeit on a smaller scale than the UK, this legislation, if successfully brought in, is more likely to make a difference in the B2B online trading between broker and insurer, an area where common standards simply do not exist and brokers are forced to use individual insurer websites to seek quotes for their clients.
Brokers and insurers need to work together to embrace the change. The UK model shows that the creation of standards has increased volumes of e-traded business for everyone.
Simon Ronaldson is director of Acturis