Analytics

Cedar Rapids, Iowa - A recent online survey on P&C insurance technology reveals that leading carriers have become adept at dealing with customers and business partners online. However, virtually all carriers recognize that there is room for improvement and that they must continuously improve their underlying technology to better serve their customers and enhance their competitive position. The results from a survey conducted by Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based technology provider Fiserv Inc. indicates critical business needs and the projects and technologies insurance carriers have underway to address them.Seventy-five percent of respondents agreed that one of their next three large-scale projects would involve their core system for maintaining insurance coverage information. Access to complete and immediate information allows the carrier to respond more effectively and efficiently. Sixty-seven percent said an agency interface or comparative rating system would be on their list of projects planned. Billing and claims projects to make things smoother for the customer tied at 42%.

Roughly a decade after insurance carriers began adding customers' credit scores to the stew of statistics used to set premiums for auto and homeowner's coverage, negative reaction and feedback appears to be waning.Opponents still contend that credit scoring tends to raise premiums overall, that it doesn't correlate directly with risk and that it may serve as a proxy for racial and ethnic discrimination, because some minority groups have lower incomes and are more likely to have credit problems.

In 2006, Auto Club Group (ACG) found that its document composition capabilities were highly inflexible and, faced with a legacy environment, it could not manipulate its print stream-at least without contracting additional workers.The Dearborn, Mich.-based company was unable to deal with spikes in mailings, which occurred when it had to send bulk materials to a large credit union, for example. And yet, employees and equipment often sat idle during lighter mailing periods.

In the world of programming, what does the future hold? This was one of the questions a panel of industry experts at the IASA 2007 Educational Conference and Business Show pondered during the IT Town Hall meeting session. The future doesn't look very bright unless some labor changes are made. One panelist said that 30% of his staff is eligible for retirement in 3-5 years and he can't find the COBOL programmers necessary to replace them. And, there just aren't experienced programmers entering the workforce.As insurance companies migrate away from COBOL, how will they maintain the applications written in the legacy code? Gone are the days of COBOL classes. The next generation has little interest in COBOL, as XML and other standards allow them to talk to existing code (such as COBOL or RPG).

Identity theft, long the bane of IT departments, is also providing insurance companies with opportunities to offer a new kind of coverage and score some marketing points at the same time.Carriers are hiring third-party services to restore policyholders' stolen identities. In general, here's how it works: The victim calls the insurer to report the ID theft. After establishing the validity of the claim, the carrier transfers the caller to the vendor's call center. The third-party vendor swings into action, drawing upon relationships with credit rating agencies and other institutions to refurbish the victim's credit. Meanwhile, the insurer can track the case until closure.

BANKS SHOULD SET SIGHTS ON RELATIONSTo entice customers to buy more financial products and services, financial services companies need to focus on improving their relationship strategies, according to Gartner Inc., a research firm headquartered in Stamford, Conn.

Insurance carriers need product development flexibility and "speed to market" to maintain competitive advantage. To help accomplish those goals, INN asked Doug Roller, CEO of Bolivar, Mo.-headquartered Duck Creek Technologies Inc., to describe his "product in a day" concept.INN: How would you define "product in a day?"

Most it executives never think of service-oriented architecture (SOA) as applying to batch applications. How could they possibly fit?But SOA is about reuse. And a business function used in online transactions may be the same business function used in batch processes, so organizations should think about their IT modernization strategy and consider SOA as a standardized application integration mechanism if nothing else.

The founders of Boston-based Homesite Insurance Group came together nearly a decade ago to create a progressive homeowners insurance company. In the quest to make their dream real, they got some help from software that links risk to geography.Today, Homesite sells in 43 states, and its underwriters evaluate the risk associated with each potential policyholder's address, says one of the founders, Manuel Rios, who now serves as Homesite vice president and chief underwriter. They do it with GeoStan geocoding technology from Group 1 Software Inc., a Pitney Bowes Co. in Lanham, Md.

XL GLOBAL TO USE INTERCEPT TO MANAGE PROCESSESStamford, Conn.-based XL Global Services Inc., a part of the XL Capital Ltd. group of companies, will use Intercept Studio, a flagship product from Baltimore-based AVIcode, to manage business processes worldwide.