Most agencies no longer receive a physical “agent’s copy” of a personal lines policy. Instead, they receive ACORD standard policy download to maintain current personal lines data in their management systems (although many carriers provide access to the full policy on their agency portals). Since personal lines insurance is almost exclusively direct billed, the carrier sends a printed copy of the policy to the policyholder.

But commercial lines is still working to catch up. Carriers still print, collate and mail paper versions of both the agent’s and insured’s policy copies to the agency. The upshot is the agency then mails the insured’s copy to the insured—and while agencies on the whole want to eliminate their dependency on paper copies of policies, they may feel a need to continue this process in order to obtain a copy for customers and provide a value-added service.

However, many commercial lines customers are interested in receiving electronic copies rather than paper. What’s the solution?

A carrier can use standard ACORD XML Activity Notification messages to electronically send a full copy of a policy to an agency. These notification messages are very simple in format and, when necessary, can include a PDF attachment of the policy—which the agency can then store in its agency management system. For the carrier, this eliminates the cost of the printing infrastructure and postage, which can be very high on commercial policies. As an added benefit, the Activity Notification process works to eliminate paper storage in the agency.

“More and more of our agents are receiving their policy copies through daily ACORD Activity Notifications,” says Susan LaBarre of Liberty Mutual. “They love the fact that they no longer have to scan, index and shred paper copies in their offices. The documents are automatically delivered to their agency management system daily.”

Today, a number of companies use ACORD notification messages to send copies of policies to their agents via the IVANS network, just like policy download. The companies send policies separately, and the policies do not replace the policy download.

“Even those agencies not receiving commercial lines download are excited about Activity Notifications because there is no chance of the transaction overwriting any data in their system, and they receive much faster than through USPS,” LaBarre explains.

Activity Notification messages are an ACORD XML standard developed to provide secure communications between carrier and agency. While historically carriers and agents have shared documents via email attachments, email is not as secure as the use of ACORD notification messages.

Activity Notifications are also useful for more than just policy attachments. Typically, today’s carriers send pending cancellation notices such as late payment notices, renewal lists and policy activity, as well as claim updates if they are not using claims download or to supplement their existing claims download. This information is often available on a carrier’s website, but an agency must interrupt daily work flows to log in to their individual carriers to see this data—and then manually key the information into their management system. Using ACORD notification messages, the agency management systems can process this data automatically into desktop activities.

“Activity Notifications messages are also a great way to send agent policy updates for lines of business they don’t receive in their carriers’ policy download,” says Caleen Alexanderson of Agencyport. “They then make the updates to those policies in their management system without having to log in to a carrier’s system and see what changes were made.”

For example, in renewal situations, Activity Notifications can reduce the changes of policies ending up in an expiration list “because they receive the renewal policy when carriers generate the renewal,” Alexanderson says. “The agent then goes into their system and renews the policy with any necessary updates. This is a big time-saver, and can also reduce E&O.”

ACORD XML Activity Notification messages offer a variety of benefits to agencies: cost savings, efficiency, security and timeliness of information. If you are not using ACORD Notification messages, talk to ACORD about how to get started.

Mele Fuller is managing owner of MLF Data Services, LLC, which provides ACORD data standards implementation and development consulting.

This article is adapted from the Agents Council for Technology (ACT) article “No More Paper Policies” and reflects the views of the author. It should not be construed as an official statement by ACT.