MetLife Agents To Use Insurance Noodle Solution

MetLife General Insurance Agency, Inc. (New York, a subsidiary of MetLife), will provide over 600 of its property & casualty licensed career agents with a Web-based small commercial insurance solution from InsuranceNoodle that offers single sign-on and comparative quoting functionality. MetLife's career agents will offer commercial property and liability products from providers such as AIG, The Hartford, Kemper and Zurich through a single source, according Insurance Noodle.

"We provide our agent customers the middleware technology and customer service that allows them to provide multiple quotes to their clients on a single-entry basis," says Don Urbanciz, Insurance Noodle's CEO. "We can bring P&C products to MetLife agents on a desktop application, and they can bring the commercial relationship they have from selling life and annuity products into a property and casualty opportunity."

Through the solution MetLife's career agents licensed to sell property and casualty insurance can begin quoting and placing BOP, workers' compensation, umbrella, commercial auto and other small-commercial market products, according to Urbanciz. Insurance Noodle benefits the agents because "it takes the guesswork out of sending out, uploading to five different carriers and hopefully getting two quotes. We'll tell the agent right away 'St. Paul will quote this, AIG will quote the cap only,' etc. They fill out the application, the information is mapped automatically through our system to the POS system of carriers whose appetite matches the request and within 48 hours they get a bindable quote back," Urbanciz says.

The agreement gives MetLife something it is unable to offer itself, according to Kimberly Fells, manager of specialty lines, MetLife General Insurance Agency. "Our arrangement with Insurance Noodle presents our field force with an excellent opportunity to cultivate clients in the commercial property and casualty market, thereby increasing the selling potential of MetLife core products," she says. By giving the agents the opportunity to maximize their earnings, the solution also positively impacts MetLife GIA's retention rate, Fells adds.

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio