AS MARKETS tighten, it is getting more difficult for agents and brokers to place some specialty-lines risks. As they search for markets, however, agents have one tool available to them that didn't exist in the last hard market: the Internet. In the past couple of years, a number of Web sites have been developed that help producers find markets for specialty business and in many cases obtain quotes. Some of these sites, including iwix.net and Widelines.com, have fallen by the wayside. Others are still very much in business. What follows is a look at some of these sites, presented in alphabetical order.

BIG 'I' MARKETS

This is a service that the Independent Insurance Agents of America introduced a little more than a year ago. Individual state associations decide whether to make the program available to their members. The Independent Insurance Agents of New Jersey was the first to do so. Currently, the program also is available to Big I members in Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to Ryann Harris, IIAA director of specialty markets. The state associations provide their members with access to the Big "I" Markets site, Ms. Harris said. Eligible agents also can access the site through links on the IIAA's Web site (www.iiaa.org) or on the Web sites of  the individual state associations.

Currently, the site gives agents access to more than 20 types of coverage, including such specialty products as ocean marine insurance, miscellaneous professional liability, public entity insurance and employment practices liability insurance.

After agents select a product, Ms. Harris said they can review underwriting and coverage information, view credentials of the company providing the product, download specimen policies, download sales tools and educational information applicable to the product, or simply request a quote without doing any of the above. The system also tells agents how they can contact the underwriter "so they don't feel like they're simply dealing with a computer screen," Ms. Harris said.

After an agent fills out an application, the underwriter is informed of the activity, can access the information in the Big "I" Markets system and can quote or decline the risk online. The agent and underwriter can upload and download files to each other, Ms. Harris said, and continue the submission process through binder confirmation.

Agents using Big "I" Markets do not incur access fees or have to meet volume requirements. They receive the same commissions they would if they were doing business with the insurers on their own, Ms. Harris said. IIAA, she said, is compensated for the service via royalty arrangements with the participating insurers.

COVERAGEFIRST.COM
(www.coveragefirst.com)

This Web site is a division of Risk Placement Services, a national wholesale broker. The site gives agents and brokers access to some 20 specialty products, including programs for nonprofit organizations, vacant property, cyber liability, self-storage facilities and builders risk insurance. At this point, many of the programs are owned by Risk Placement Services, according to Dustin Davis, the managing director of CoverageFirst.com. The site also has been adding programs from various MGAs, he said. Both admitted and nonadmitted programs are available at the site. Most of the programs accept online applications and provide online quotes, Davis said.

The site also has a feature called Coverage Pro that enables agents to request a search for any type of coverage. One of Risk Placement Service's seven offices will then search the markets on behalf of the agent. "The idea was to facilitate that first phone call, where the agent asks, 'Say, do you have a market for this?'' Davis said. "We'll search our database, see if we have a market for them and respond within 24 hours."

Rather than enter into separate brokerage agreements with the different programs accessible through the site, agents sign one contract with CoverageFirst.com As part of the process, they must show evidence of $1 million in E&O insurance and be properly licensed in the states in which they do business. There is no registration fee, Davis said, or volume commitment. The brokerage agreement gives agents access to all programs currently available at the site and any that will be added in the future.

Agents negotiate commissions with the individual programs. "It's pretty much the standard commission arrangement," Davis said, adding that CoverageFirst takes no part of the commission.

INSURANCENOODLE
(www.insurancenoodle.com.)

This site, which has been known primarily as a site for placing small-business accounts, announced last month that it intends to expand its offering to include some specialty and niche products. Co-founder Robert Rudy said InsuranceNoodle is staying with its core business, "but we're expanding outside of what I would call the plain-vanilla BOP."

Last month, the site began offering employment practices liability insurance in four Midwestern states on a test basis and expects to offer EPLI nationwide within a few months. The site also introduced an E&O/BOP product from Chubb for emerging information technology companies.

Rudy said InsuranceNoodle has engaged Woolard Gioia Blundell Associates, a consulting firm with expertise in program business, to help it screen the marketplace for suitable products. It also will help InsuranceNoodle develop and obtain insurers for its own "private-label" programs, although Rudy said those probably will take nine to 12 months to create and to clear the state regulatory process. In the meantime, InsuranceNoodle will look for regional specialty insurers that are looking for wider distribution of their existing products. Among the types of risks that Rudy said InsuranceNoodle plans to serve are restaurants, truckers, hotels/motels and habitational risks.

Agents must contract with Insur-anceNoodle to access its markets. Until recently, agents shared their commissions 50/50 with the Web site. Rudy said agents placing business through the site now retain 70% of the commission on workers compensation policies having premiums greater than $20,000 and on all other policies generating $5,000 or more in premiums.

MARKETSCOUT
(www.marketscout.com)

The site gives agents and brokers access to markets for more than 500 industry and coverage classifications, according to founder and CEO Richard Kerr. Kerr formerly was chairman and CEO of Lambert Fenchurch, an international broker that acquired many retail insurance agencies.

"Many of the agents we met with were good folks and didn't necessarily want to sell out, but obviously they did not have access to the markets they needed," Kerr said, "nor did they have the technical expertise some of the larger companies had."

Kerr said he left Lambert Fen-church and created MarketScout to address those problems. For each type of product offered, MarketScout selects what it calls a "best of class" market. Agents interact online with each market via an "e-industry specialist." These specialists are MGAs, program administrators or insurance company underwriters.

A committee considers the qualifications of each potential "best of class" partner. "We look at their financials, Best's ratings, management styles, commercial practices, how long they've been in business, what their claims-paying history has been, who the underwriter is, what the commissions are," Kerr said. He added that a specialist also must have at least 10 years' experience and full underwriting authority for the product to be offered. Although MarketScout looks outside for most of its products and insurance experts, it has some 25 to 30 in-house programs for which it employs its own underwriters.

Under Kerr's approach, a retail agent who uses the site to seek a quote for, say, a trucker in Tulsa, Okla., will receive just one quote, which comes from the "best of class" insurance company for that type of risk and territory. "We're not going to put up 15 different companies and 'spreadsheet' them against each other," Kerr said, adding that market-locator sites that adopted that strategy largely have failed because underwriters do not want to write business in a multiple-carrier "cheapest price wins" Internet format.

Kerr said his site recently registered its 10,000th retail agent. Agents must sign a producer agreement with MarketScout, provide evidence of E&O insurance and meet other requirements. Agents undergo a background check that can include an examination of their credit histories, among other things. Kerr said that 25% to 30% of applicants are rejected.

Agents receive full commissions from the site's markets, Kerr said, and have no volume requirements to meet.

Kerr said that MarketScout derives its income from an annual licensing fee paid by each selected "best of class" market. It also receives a percentage of the premium each market receives.

In addition to obtaining quotes for everything from explosives manufacturers to acupuncturists, retail agents can place standard business, including small commercial and workers comp, through MarketScout.

PROGRAMBUSINESS.COM
(www.programbusiness.com)

This Web site is owned by National Marketing Services, a telemarketing company for insurance agents. Larry Neilson, CEO of both organizations, said that the idea behind ProgramBusiness.com was to bring agents and markets together. Over the years, he said, NMS has built up a database of more than 20,000 retail property-

casualty agencies that can be searched by such criteria as premium volume, mix of business and location. MGAs and insurers have expressed a desire to purchase all or part of the list. Neilson, while interested in helping these markets, said he was reluctant to sell the list outright. On the other hand, he said he was aware that agents using his telemarketing services needed products to sell and could benefit from gaining access to the markets. "So ProgramBusiness.com kind of solves both of those problems," he said.

MGAs, insurers and program administrators can purchase "storefronts" on the Web site for a flat annual fee. Agents looking for a particular product can search those storefronts. Neilson said that ProgramBusiness. com also drives traffic to the storefronts via "permission-based" marketing. He said his database contains the names and e-mail addresses of more than 17,000 agents that have given him permission to e-mail them a newsletter every 10 days. The newsletter contains a variety of articles and also keeps readers apprised of new products available from the storefront owners. Neilson said storefront owners also are permitted to market directly to the NMS database via e-mail or broadcast fax. For instance, a storefront owner can send a message to all agents in the database who reside in Oklahoma and Kansas and who have premium volume greater than $2 million. "The pull-through rate is somewhere between 5% and 7% because it's a permission-based list," Neilson said.

Retail agents, on the other hand, can peruse the site's various storefronts, some of which enable agents to submit applications online and obtain quotes, or contain links to an owner's Web site, where agents can conduct such transactions. Agents also can use a search engine to locate markets for a certain product in a particular state. The search engine will list the storefront owners first, Neilson said, but then also show any others that ProgramBusines.com is aware of. "We list those for free because we want (the site) to be a true exchange where agents can see the total picture," he said, "not just who is paying us."

Agents wishing to use the site don't have to meet any qualifications. Nor does the site take any part of an agent's commission or charge any fees. "We are not an MGA," Neilson said. "What we are is a facilitator."

SILVER PLUME MARKETS
(www.silverplume.com)

This is a look-up service that contains listings for more than 6,500 markets. Chris McMurray, Silver Plume's director of marketing and strategic business development, says the listings are updated quarterly and, in some cases, monthly.

McMurray said an agent can search this database by the product that the agent desires and the state in which it is to be sold. Agents also can search the database by the type of business to be insured. In response, the database provides the agent with complete contact information, including a specific person to call or e-mail. The results of a search also include such information as a program's name and coverages, liability limits, minimum premiums and commissions. After obtaining this information, an agent contacts the market direct, rather than through Silver Plume Markets.

Silver Plume Markets is part of Silver Plume's traditional CD-ROM subscriber service. That service also has been available online for the past year, McMurray said. Silver Plume Markets also can be obtained as part of Silver Plume's new Sage product, which was introduced last month. McMurray said that Sage uses proprietary technology to give agents access to information they can use to sell and service businesses more effectively. He said a search for "machine shops," for instance, will turn up such things as a coverage analysis, checklists, recommended coverage, risk management considerations and sample brochures. After using Sage to become knowledgeable about a given type of business and its needs, agents then can use Silver Plume Markets to obtains options for placing coverage for it, McMurray said. Sage is an online, subscription-based service. The subscription fee varies with agency size.

SUPERIORACCESS.COM
(www.superioraccess.com)

This is the site of Superior Access Insurance Services, an MGA that transacts business solely via the Internet. It represents 37 insurers offering a variety of standard personal- and commercial-lines products, as well as life, health and long-term care insurance. It also offers quotes for such specialty business as contractors insurance and commercial umbrellas. Furthermore, it has markets in all states for workers compensation insurance, which can be a tough risk to place right now. Availability of some of the site's programs varies from state to state. Some of the programs are exclusive to SAIS

Mike Mayo, executive vice president of SAIS, said the site's technology instantly underwrites submitted business. Agents answer a series of yes/no questions for the coverage desired, immediately get a quote and can bind the business. For a fee, SAIS also will install its quoting technology on an agent's Web site on a private-label basis.

To do business with the site, agents must enter into a brokerage agreement with SAIS. They also must be properly licensed and provide evidence of E&O insurance. The site displays the commissions agents receive for business, which range from 5% on tough workers comp risks to 12.5% for one of the site's contractors programs and 25% for surety bonds.

In the past two years, Mayo said SAIS has grown to $65 million in premium from $18 million and to 7,750 agents from 1,900.

"We are doing what everybody is talking about and still isn't doing," he said. "And that is, we are writing a lot of business over the Internet at incredibly reduced transaction expenses."