The insurance industry is way behind the construction industry in the use of technology. Blue Shield and Travelers are perfect examples of companies that still believe the fax machine is modern technology. I have had the unfortunate experience of having to work with both of these companies laboriously painful paper processes recently. Blue Shield who provides our employee health insurance plan does not have email access. Everything has to be mailed or faxed. Their invoices are 5-10 pages long with many pages duplicated. When I asked them to email these to me their response "we don't do email".
Travelers a company all of us in the construction industry know well has a slight advantage over Blue Cross. This year they provided me a temporary email address for submitting our 2009 payroll records for their annual review. This is a lot better then last years 30+ page fax I had to send them. There is still room for improvements, they should really provide clients with a portal for uploading this information and tracking the status of invoices and renewals. Even the state of CA DGS lets us go online to upload our Small business certificate documents for renewal. Travelers has made some progress but still has a way to go. 
In the mean time construction companies, facility owners, and engineering firms are disposing of their paper processes at a record rate and moving to web based project management applications, BIM modeling, blogs, and virtual offices faster then these three companies can refill the paper tray on their fax machine. Many in the construction industry have recognized the limits and inefficiencies in email and are moving to collaborative applications, portals, and blogs to move information electronically.
So if you want to help move the insurance industry forward I would urge you to request all insurance documents via email, after enough requests they may finally get it.
Eric Law
EADOC Founder