Going mobile: with communications technology so prevalent across the country, carriers are responding with state-of-the-art wireless devices for their in-house and field employees.

Mobile technology has become widespread across America that many insurance companies have jumped on the real-time information bandwagon to improve field sales communications and operations.

"The major areas in which we're seeing increases are P/C claims for field adjusters and field appraisers. They need to be connected pretty much constantly," said Donald Light, a senior analyst at Boston-based financial research and consulting firm Celent. The industry's status quo "is to have your field appraisers in basically continuous contact or connectivity with the desk adjuster."

Mobile technology is used to synchronize data between the field and head office, send and retrieve information such as quotes, and access Web-based applications, such as when clients self-administer, said Robert Rosenberg, president of telecommunications industry analysis firm Insight Research Corp. of Boonton, NJ.

In May, Insight Research published a study called The Mobile Workforce and Enterprise Applications 2007-2012, which predicts "Over the next five years ... most industries will move away from a fixed and location-centric work environment to a dispersed mobile world where workers are deployed in the location where they are most effective."

The study included a focus on the insurance industry's major requirements, such as claims management, agents in field and customer service--specifically, "How would those functional areas be able to be addressed with wireless?" Rosenberg said.

"You could supply your field claims adjusters, which is already being done of course, with PDAs that can capture claims assessment data--take the picture and essentially provide a unified data format back to the mainframe," he explained.

By embracing mobile technology, insurers have reduced the time it takes to make claims and increased efficiency through productivity, Light said. "If you can direct and redirect your field adjusters during the day, you're going to get more work out of them," he said.

Additionally, mobile connectivity is important for employees who spend a lot of work time out of the office. "It could be your distribution management or channel management who spend their time going from agent to agent or from broker to broker. It could be a wholesaler over on the life side," Light said.

Captive agents, who spend their days traveling from one satellite agency to another, also benefit. "These are people who usually don't have to be rerouted during the day" Light said. "Having connectivity to underwriters, product specialists and service professionals is extremely helpful."

Getting Started

The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.'s property/casualty operations are "heavily e-mail-based," which gave the company a firm starting point to go wireless, said Saad Ayub, chief information officer, sales and service.

"As we started looking at the productivity of employees, you start seeing a lot of people who interact using a BlackBerry," Ayub said. So the company supplied the handhelds to its executive staff, then to customers and market users. Then they tackled the sales force.

"A year-and-a-half ago we launched the Sales Excellence Program," Ayub said. "We wanted to move sales from an art to a science: How do we supply them the fight data in the right matrix so they can get that information they need and be more productive?"

Hartford's internal sales representatives noted when they were visiting agents in the field, they spent a lot of time collecting information about those agents from various data in the company's systems, Ayub said.

So Hartford moved away from wireless handheld devices toward wireless "smart cards" for field sales laptops. And now, regardless of their location, salespeople can access files in the company's central system.

"Our smart card is more of a dashboard, tying their objectives to the business we are getting from various agencies so they can actually get the information they need," Ayub said.

"This has helped them improve their productivity," he said. "Then we came to a point where now that they're out in the field and they're waiting in a parking lot to meet an agent, they can actually do work while they're waiting. Our current work force comes back saying they're having more time to spend with their agents and families because this downtime is working for them."

A side benefit to Hartford's use of wireless communications is that younger, more tech-savvy agents see it as a draw over other potential employers. "One guy had offers from two different carriers," Ayub said. "He us because of the mobile technology we could provide."

"They can actually see how they can be more productive," he added. "It makes us more attractive to new sales reps coming in."

"A lot of younger [agents] don't have a traditional phone, and they're very comfortable using their cell phone to browse the Web," Rosenberg agreed. "And at the same time they can input their information."

Advancements, Advantages

While mobile communication for large groups is readily available, Light cautioned insurers to have the proper structure in place.

"You can get broadband access through a cellular phone network now on a pretty common availability basis," Light said. "A telecom provider's infrastructure is to a large degree in place, so it can often be as simple as buying a little PCIA [Personal Communications Industry Association] card to slip in your field people's personal computers and notebooks.

"That's pretty much where people are going to be going, I think," Light added, predicting wireless usage by insurance sales forces could start slipping.

"Wi-Fi was great when there was nothing else, but you actually don't want your adjuster hanging out in Starbucks," he said. "So if you keep them in their vans or cars with their computers plugged into the cigarette lighter hole and cell phone broadband hooked in, they're there.

"From a hardware point of view it's really pretty negligible now," Light added. "It's definitely different from three years ago."

Winterthur U.S. Holdings, the holding company for General Casualty Insurance and Unigard Insurance Group of Madison, Wis., supports its field sales force with more than 200 BlackBerrys, said Ray Perron, systems networking manager. The company has been using the mobile e-mail-capable devices en masse since late 2004.

"They became very important as a tool for us to respond to agents, and everyone, very fast," Perron said. "Communications now is in real time. Instead of an individual on the road having to wait until they're in a hotel room to check their e-mails, they can check them now in airports. They can check them while driving on the road."

"It doesn't make things easier; it makes us able to respond quicker. It certainly doesn't replace human interaction," Winterthur spokeswoman Anne M. Smith said. It won't replace the need for agents to talk to their field reps before taking action, "but it's making that process happen faster."

Winterthur was expected to be acquired by Australian company QBE in late May/early June as the largest of QBE's United States operations. While Winterthur will be known as QBE Regional Insurance Cos., its two units, General Casualty and Unigard, will retain their identities.

The company posts a field tech representative in each of its regions for General Casualty; each handles a variety of software applications and responds to field needs or challenges. Field tech reps especially like using "unified communications," which allow voice access to e-mail, a computerized voice to read e-mail aloud, and telephone dialing by simply saying, "Call a number."

"We really extended the cellular platform so that it makes the cell phone much more powerful," Perron said. "Our tech reps love it. They love technology; they have been begging us to get more technology in the field for them. We look at the technology and see where it fits into our business and work with them for a solid resolution."

One field tech rep traveling recently through Michigan was using unified communications to listen to e-mails while she drove. She heard an urgent message from an Ohio-based agent having trouble retrieving a quote through his mobile system, Winterthur's Smith said.

"She pulled over in a coffee shop with Wi-Fi access, pulled out her wireless laptop, and resolved the problem instantly," Smith said. "Otherwise she wouldn't have gotten to that until she'd gotten to her hotel, checked in, and set up her computer. The agent would have closed for the day; she wouldn't have gotten back to him until the next day."

The Future Is Now

"It's going to be interesting to see how the physical technology evolves," Light said. "My own vision of the connectivity device of the future is essentially a handkerchief."

He described a handheld device that could be folded into perhaps a 4-inch square and stuck in a pocket. "But it opens up to 12-by-12 [inches] or whatever, and that's enough for a decent keyboard and a decent screen.

"At some point people will see devices that are both compact and expandable in some usable ways that will bridge the divide on the computer on the one hand, and the smart phone on the other hand," Light added.

That's not far off. Readius is a new personal wireless device from Polymer Vision Ltd., a 2006 spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics of The Netherlands. Marketed as "the world's first device with a rollable display," the Readius itself expands, creating a 5-inch, rolling screen display.

Companies such as Sky and Vonage (whose keychain-sized V-Phone turns any personal computer into a fully functional Vonage telephone) and others are developing ways to bring additional data services into the mobile environment, said John Cunningham, director of marketing for international calling solution Mino Wireless of Sunnyvale, Calif. The company offers a small software application for wireless devices that can reduce the cost of calls to Europe from $3 a minute to 3 cents a minute.

"You've got a new source of wireless applications ready to roll," Cunningham said. One is WiMAX, a "super Wi-Fi" boasting greater range and a higher bandwidth, and companies are trying to address the gaps cellular callers run into while roaming between WiMAX and regular cell networks.

Japan's second-largest cellular phone carrier, KDDI, is producing mobile phones with sophisticated data services that include a CRM (customer relationship management) system, work-flow management and global positioning system mapping--a user can take a GPS reading or photo of an incident, and the GPS component geotags it for future reference.

"All that's coming here," Cunningham said. Some companies are developing computer screens that can be viewed via a visor, goggles or glasses.

"It looks like you're looking at a large computer monitor three feet away" Cunningham said. The U.S. military has been using similar technology, which also is being developed for consumers and businesses, he said.

Hartford is testing podcasting and videocasting technology to take it even further, Ayub said. The company hopes to podcast corporate messages to sales reps, and to then use videoconferencing for them to confer with agents.

"We have a Technology Innovation Lab where we work with different parts of the business," said Hartford spokeswoman Sue Honeyman. "Sometimes they're involved in exploring technology and coming up with some unusual technologies. Other times they're taking technologies that are out there that are commonplace, like podcasting and videoconferencing, and working with our business system to figure out integrated and innovative ways of using it. And we're really focused on that."

In May, Hartford tested videoconferencing using a control group of 25 agents.

"I can be a sales rep sitting in a parking lot and I can think, 'Let me do a quick video conference with an agent that I have not visited in two weeks,'" Ayub said. "That will be the next evolution."

Key Points

* As mobile technology becomes more readily available, insurance companies are using it to improve efficiency of field sales communications and operations. * Carriers are finding that having continuous contact with field representatives is increasing productivity.

* Mobile technology allows field reps to use "down time" to access files and clients and streamline workloads.

Security--Know the Risks

Insurers must be aware of risks involved with mobile technology, said Winn Schwartau, an expert on information security, infrastructure protection and electronic privacy.

"What's happening in mobile technology today is an exact replica of what happened in the desktop world 15 years ago: massive deployment of technology with little or no concern for security," said Schwartau, an author and the founder of Infowar.com, a blog that offers discussion boards and tips on achieving and maintaining mobile technology security.

"Insurance companies specifically need to look at mobile security in a minimum of three areas: their own staffs, their partners, and contractors and consultants," he said. "As a bad guy, I only need to find one open window, and you could have thousands of them."

About 40% of security-related events in business are caused by user error, and some 80% of spam comes through people's home computers because they're not protecting it or using it properly, Schwartau said.

Ideally, insurance companies should have someone on staff who is certified in some type of IT security or identity theft program to work with its business partners and customers. Having more in-house controls over identity theft also could reduce a company's premium for hacker insurance, he said.

"What you want is your entire staff and your customer base to become human firewalls and human intrusion-detection systems," Schwartau said. Bad guys "will go to the weakest spot, and people are the weakest link in security."

What's Out There: A Wireless Technology Primer

BlackBerry: A wireless handheld with constant e-mail access.

Bluetooth: Wireless technology designed for short-range communications among personal computers, laptops, personal digital assistants, printers and cell phones.

Broadband: A fast Internet connection (such as cable or satellite) with enough bandwidth to support multiple voice, data and video channels.

Dashboard: Software that automatically displays useful files and accessories such as calculators or calendars.

Firewall: Software and/or hardware that fits between two networks to prevent access by unauthorized users.

Geotag: The process of assigning geographic information to a blog entry or photo on a mobile device to pinpoint its location.

GPS (Global Positioning System): A system that uses satellites, receivers and software to show a person's precise geographic location.

PDA (Personal Digital Assistant): A handheld device with many of the same computing and communications uses as a laptop.

Podcast/Videocast: An audio/video broadcast that has been converted to an audio file format for playback in a digital music player or computer.

Smart card, PCIA (Personal Communications Industry Association) card: A credit card with a built-in microprocessor and memory used for identification or financial transactions.

Smart phone: One device used for phone calls, e-mail, contacts, calendar, addresses, etc. Some also offer accessibility to PDFs (portable document formats) and Excel spreadsheets.

Wi-Fi: Developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance, the term Wi-Fi is used to describe wireless local area network products that provide access to Internet connectivity on the road in cafes, coffeeshops, bookstores, etc.

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access): Similar to Wi-Fi for Internet access, WiMAX operates on different GHz bands and can provide wireless coverage of up to 31 miles.

Sources: http://www.wi-fi.org/glossary.php; http://www.pcmag.com; The Wall Street Journal; www.BlackBerry.com; www.nat.org/dashboard/; www.pcia.com.

Learn More

Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.

A.M. Best Company # 58707

Distribution: Independent agents and brokers, broker-dealers, marketing organizations

Winterthur Group

A.M. Best Company # 85342

Distribution: Multichannel distribution

For ratings and other financial strength information about these companies, visit www.ambest.com.