Analytics

New York - The American Life Insurance Congress Ltd. (ALIC) has adopted a mission statement and elected its founding board of governors at a meeting held on July 27, 2007.

Much like soccer, the concept of bank insurance or "bancassurance" enjoys a much higher profile outside the United States than within.While the idea of banks offering insurance products is not new, in much of the world, the practice is, and has only taken off in the past two decades. In parts of Europe, such as France, Italy and Spain, the adoption of bank insurance has grown steadily as consumers have become accustomed to their bank as a distribution channel for insurance products.

In the course of our normal business, our editors pride themselves on touching base daily with you, our readers-insurers, reinsurers, members of your distribution networks (managing general agents, brokers and agents) and the technology solution providers who support you. They ask about your challenges, and listen to your concerns as well as those expressed by our editorial advisory board experts. We also regularly garner feedback from informal Web polls and online surveys.We hear a lot of the same issues: In a softening market marked by increased merger and acquisition activity, your challenge is to remain competitive, be first to market, lower your costs, and give your distribution networks and the customers they serve the necessary tools to succeed. In the words of one reader, "it's like trying to stay in the driver's seat and navigate an ever-changing, congested, winding road."

XSELL RELEASES INSURANCE FRAMEWORX PLATFORMXSell LLC, a Jacksonville, Fla., provider of on-demand marketing solutions, released XSell's Insurance FrameworX, a version of its Web-based Customer Interaction Marketing platform.

As men and women retire from careers in insurance technology, insurers are scrambling to find technology professionals who will be able to deal adeptly with all manner of platforms, from legacy to service-oriented architecture.Complicating this problem is the fact that, although the U.S. Dept. of Labor expects IT careers to be among the fastest growing occupations through 2014, females represent only 14% of the up-and-coming computer science and engineering professionals from which to choose, according to Computing Research Assoc., Washington, D.C.

Data management has developed a bad reputation. Too many insurance executives see it as little more than edits and testing. They consider it a set of steps added at the end of a project, when it could cause delays. And therein lies the problem. Carriers need to change their way of thinking and start building data management into the project from the beginning rather than incorporating it later.

Enterprises are using more secure practices when it comes to data communications, according to a security survey conducted by Boca Raton, Fla.-based Amplitude Research Inc., commissioned by Albuquerque, N.M.-based VanDyke Software Inc. Close to two-thirds (148) of 235 respondents are somewhat or very satisfied with the reliability and usability of their secure file transfer solution. However, 163 of 245 respondents said they are likely to purchase a new or replacement secure file transfer solution within the next 12 months.This is the fourth year in a row that VanDyke Software has commissioned an Amplitude Research survey of network and system administrators from a variety of industries, including the insurance industry, on the subject of network security. The questions have remained mostly the same, although minor adjustments have been made to include questions about current industry developments.

Midwest Insurance Co. is an INNovators Award Winner runner-up, chosen for its strategy to replace an aging legacy policy administration system with one that now delivers real-time data to all end users.Just seven years old in 2005, Midwest Insurance Co. had already outgrown its policy administration system. "It was old client-server technology," recalls Rick Vogl, the company's vice president-IT. "The legacy system couldn't handle the volume of quotes we have coming through our system, and the amount of premiums we push through it.

Whether it's underwriting, billing or customer systems, legacy mainframe applications persist among even the most technologically advanced insurance companies. Enterprises are being forced to introduce new products and services faster than ever, and the implementation of cost-cutting strategies means that they have to do more with fewer resources.Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an effective and pragmatic approach that enables greater system agility, including the legacy mainframe solutions that house enormous amounts of policy data. New legacy-SOA integration strategies must tap into mainframe performance, security and programming resources, as well as valuable data. When they do, good things can happen. Insurers taking this more comprehensive approach and making the mainframe an active participant in SOA initiatives are experiencing success.

London - Risk Management Solutions Inc. (RMS), a Newark , Calif. , provider of products and services for catastrophe risk management, launched a new initiative among six of Lloyd's largest managing agents this week designed to change the way exposure data is used in the London Market. The RMS London Market Data Community gives members access to data that has been standardized for use among the members. Data is prepared once by the RMS Data Cleansing Team, and then made available to the community, saving subscribers the time and money involved in preparing the information individually.