Author: ACT News Team 

While Ohio Mutual Insurance Group serves a diverse group of agencies and agents, one theme emerges consistently: the desire to provide best-in-class technology and service to Ohio Mutual customers, agents and policyholders. In his role as Ohio Mutual's VP of Sales, Howie Barber works with the company's technology team to develop solutions that meet independent agents' current and future needs. As a new ACT Supporting Member, he talked to ACT News about some of the company's shared goals and emerging solutions. 

ACT News: As a carrier, what are your biggest technology obstacles when it comes to providing integration and functionality that customers want? 

Howie Barber, VP of Sales, Ohio Mutual Insurance Group: We partner with a wide variety of agencies, which means we often have significant diversity of needs. Just over 70% of our agencies use agency management systems, which leaves a fairly large subset who don't use agency management systems at all in their day-to-day operations. We try to meet the needs as best as we can of all our independent agent partners by providing direction and recommendations, plus financial assistance to eligible agencies, to help them advance their technology capabilities. 

Just like every other carrier, one of our largest concerns is cyber security—our own and our agents. By sharing access into our system, we open the gates to all different kinds of access and possibilities. Our IT team has done a wonderful job of protecting our systems internally and externally.  

Trying to manage the large number of IT projects internally, even in an organization our size, can be brain-numbing. It's a matter of resources versus priorities. We are really fortunate here at Ohio Mutual to have an IT senior management team that understands that they serve the need of the business units, and I have frequently heard our VP and assistant VP of IT use that exact terminology. We have a coordinated process to manage the requests made to our IT folks from our business units that has really been successful. A project control team that consists of our IT managers plus representatives from every business group in the company meets twice a month to evaluate requests and projects through a prioritization process. It's a rigorous process, and each requestor has to provide justification for their requests.

ACT News: What do those requests typically look like? 

Barber: It can be anything as complex as creating a new product or entering a new state to more mundane items like managing the language on an invoice. If something requires programming to accomplish it, the project control team is going to be involved.

ACT News: What are the biggest obstacles for agency partners? 

Barber: Probably accepting change and the lack of investment in new technology. For the IA channel to grow and prosper, agencies are going to have to make some changes in how they operate. 

That said, there are a lot of agencies out there doing good work and embracing and making changes. There are others who feel they cannot afford the large financial commitment to update systems or modernize their business practices. We will work with our agents to show them the importance of taking risk. Ohio Mutual offers a Partnership Investment Program based on volume, growth and profitability to eligible agents through which we can help finance technological advancement, as well as in other areas. While this concept isn't totally unique in the industry, our program in terms of its breadth, flexibility and dollars available is strong. It may help an agency that is resource-constrained move forward in a positive fashion that it otherwise wouldn't have.

ACT News: In a perfect tech world, what would your agent-facing and customer-facing solution look like? 

Barber: Immediacy. This is a 24/7 world, so we need self-service functionality that is fast and easy to use. We aren't totally there yet, but know we have to get there quickly. Customers don't want to be transferred multiple times before reaching someone who can actually help them in any business. Giving our associates the authority levels to make decisions and providing clear communication to our customers on whom to contact to get the right answers is a priority.

ACT News: And is that process automated? It involves some technical savvy? 

Barber: Yes, it is data-sensitive. To do it right, we need accurate and timely information from our agency partners concerning proper contact data: who is their claims contact, network administration person, commercial lines or personal lines contacts, etc. We need to do a better job targeting our communications and information sharing so the right people in the agencies who need to have this information get it.

ACT News: Even the simplest-sounding aspects of agency interface end up being tech-dependent. So what about the more esoteric things? What is Ohio Mutual doing to understand and exploit the opportunities around the InsureTech world? 

Barber: Even for a company our size, we must keep a watchful eye on emerging technologies. We have had speakers and consultants close to the InsureTech/disruptor industry make presentations and keep us advised of advancements and opportunities. We are interested—whether it's plug-n-play solutions or larger investment strategies. Our management team stays abreast constantly.

ACT News: There are other trends, such as the internet of things, connected homes, connected everything it seems. Can you describe the opportunities you see as a carrier? 

Barber: We have an internal study group that is looking at where IoT is going. Right now, we are focused mostly on technology to help with loss prevention or mitigation. Our products need to be responsive to these advances in technology. We are a major market for farm business in Ohio. Farmers are very tech savvy and dependent on technology to be successful in their business. They're operating drones and using analytics for planning purposes and their daily operations. We are committed to modernizing our product offerings to meet our policyholders needs and to make sure we provide coverage for these exposures not just in the farming industry.

ACT News: Our distribution channel has long been described as glacially slow to adopt technology. What do you see as our overall call to action? 

Barber: Communicating and working together with our agent partners, the agent associations, policyholders and networks like ACT, TrustedChoice.com, etc. seems like the best way to develop the most relevant tech solutions. It's going to be survival of the fittest, and it is part of the reason we became a member of ACT. We all really have to listen to each other and commit to making the changes necessary to get to the next level.  

We have our own Ohio Mutual Agency Council on Technology made up of eight to 10 agents that meet with representatives from OMIG at least annually to share input, feedback and offer recommendations. We participate in industry meetings, focus groups, and agency and policyholder surveys, and we have other feedback mechanisms to tell us what our customers want and need. We must listen and deliver, and I think we do a pretty good job of that.  

We are steadfastly committed to our IA partners, so we are maximizing our use of technology to improve their business and ours. We're listening and responding, which we think is the solution.