One might think that Pam Van Pelt is a bit of a computer junkie. An independent insurance agent in Ames, she has seven computer monitors hooked up in her office, with at least three of them continuously logged in to insurance companies’ Web sites.

Despite all that hardware, Van Pelt still has to call back customers to provide them with comparative price quotes from multiple insurance companies. It’s particularly frustrating, say independent agents, because they know the technology exists to enable them to obtain quotes almost instantaneously through their agency management systems.

By the time an independent agent logs on to each insurer’s Web site and enters all of the data each time, “it could take an agent 90 minutes to do three quotes,” said Bob Skow, chief executive officer of the Independent Insurance Agents of Iowa. The organization represents more than 750 agency members in the state.

For several years, the IIAI has sought cooperation from insurers to adopt a technology known as real-time interface. That technology would enable independent agents to generate quotes about as quickly as a travel Web site compares flights and generates a sorted list of options ranked by price.

However, agents say insurance companies have been slow to make their systems accessible, and the majority of those that have still require agents to deal with the company’s Web site.

“We did a survey of our members, and frankly, they’re fed up; they’ve had it; they’re mad,” Skow said. “The companies have done what’s best for them, but not for the consumer.”

Insurers say they’re doing the best they can to move forward with a complex technological issue.

EMC Insurance Group Inc. in Des Moines, for instance, has been working to implement real-time response for quotes for the past several years, said Teresa Addy, a business technology analyst with the company. It began offering real-time inquiry capability in May 2003. It currently offers agencies access to its system through a process known as bridging, which enables agencies to eliminate most duplicate entries of data.

“But real-time response [for rate quotes] is a different animal,” Addy said, adding that it’s “on tap for our next wave of development.”

“We wanted to make sure that when we embarked on that journey to real-time that it would be a good experience for our agencies,” she said. Two key hurdles to implementing real-time for quotes are variations in software vendor technology as well as non-standardized Web editing across vendors, she added.

The issue has become a top priority for the IIAI, which plans to bring in a national expert on the topic to speak at its 2007 Agency Automation Technology Expo, scheduled for June 19 in Ames. Also speaking will be two agency representatives who have documented a savings of between three and five hours per month per customer service representative by using real-time.

Being able to provide instantaneous quotes is increasingly important for independent agents, who now write the majority of new policies in the state, Skow said. According to data from A.M. Best Co., independent agents now write nearly 67 percent of all lines of insurance policies in Iowa, up from 59 percent in 2005, Skow said.

“Very candidly, (insurance companies) have outsourced all the work to the independent agents,” he said. “That’s fine; that’s actually made us more competitive. Our concern is, we have to eliminate the multiple steps.”

Of the top-performing “best practice” agencies nationally, 93 percent use real-time for inquiries, and 50 percent perform those functions with five or more insurance carriers.

Van Pelt, who works for Knapp-Tedesco Insurance Agency Inc., said “99.9 percent of the companies we deal with use bridging” rather than real-time for quotes.

After sitting through some meetings with insurance company representatives on the issue, Van Pelt concluded that persuading companies to move faster toward real-time quotes “seems like it’s a hard push,” she said. “The companies in Iowa are still making us go to their individual Web sites.”

Dana Ramundt, owner of The Dana Co. agency in West Des Moines, said getting agencies on board with real-time quotes is also a challenge.To his knowledge, no one tracks hard data on how many Iowa agencies use real-time systems.

“From my gut, I would say probably 10 to 15 percent of agencies in Iowa are probably using it to the extent they can,” he said. “The bottom half may not even be aware of the concept.”

Ramundt said his agency’s operations manager estimates about 80 percent of insurance companies have adopted some form of real-time access to their systems.

“There are some companies that are out there and have devoted resources to it,” he said. “There are others that think it’s a waste of their time and money to make it available. It’s my belief that those are the companies that will get left behind in this.”

The issue really comes down to doing business in the most efficient manner possible, Ramundt said.

“I don’t think people’s expectations are all that high (with insurance),” he said. “I think real-time is a tool that occasionally allows us to wow somebody.”