Technophobia clogging the wheels of progress

As one industry figure recently remarked "imarket has been the longest drum roll in history" and certainly the slower-than-anticipated roll out has damaged confidence. However despite the fact that Polaris staff are the first to admit this error - and that imarket has now got off the ground and is gaining momentum, brokers remain stoic.

Of course, past IT failures have fuelled technophobia and the notion of the IT revolution has largely been as welcome by business managers as any other kind of revolution in the office. That said, to pick Julie Rodilosso's 24/7 Broking venture as an example, this was actually well ahead of its time; a point underlined by the fact that this remote service model is essentially the basis of Sirius 21.

Another caution-inducing aspect of IT is its own hype. Synonymous with everything slick and efficient, the initial phase of introduction is rarely without glitches; witness the lumpy road to implementation of electronic data interchange. However, also consider the nightmare of going back to the systems brokers used 10 or 15 years ago to transact motor and home insurance. Despite the understandable misgivings brokers have about imarket there is an established pattern of technological hiccups and, importantly, imarket's have been no greater than those suffered by EDI in the beginning.

The wider fact also remains that insurance still lags behind its peers. There are those in banking that hold up insurance as an example of how not to implement IT and, given the disparate attempts of companies spending millions in silos, who can blame them. That is why imarket is important. For the first time the most influential insurers in the market agree on how to harness technology.

On a more sinister note, you do not have to look far to see insurers clamoring for closer contact with the end customer - often cutting brokers out of the chain - so imarket ought not be dismissed hastily. Whatever happens, one certainty is that imarket is a huge collaborative endeavor requiring effort from all sides to succeed. Some further high profile endorsement by insurer chief executives would probably be in order, however, gradual progress is evident. Simultaneously, brokers need to be honest about their reservations about imarket to ensure is it not simply technophobia that is excluding them and their firms from something which a lot of time, money and effort is being poured into to make succeed.