Analytics

Outsourcing provides the personnel and technology Swiss Re needs to keep growing commercial insurance lines at a blistering pace.Take the example of staffing at the century-and-a-half-old company, which has U.S. headquarters in Armonk, N.Y. With operations in 30 countries, Swiss Re would face a nearly insurmountable task trying to locate, hire and train employees for every office.

Patrick Snowball, executive director of Aviva UK, flew down to Mumbai, India in February to accept an award from the Indian software industry. But India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) wasn't lauding the insurance giant for the jobs it was moving to outsourcing firms on the subcontinent. Instead, Aviva was recognized for taking jobs back.The previous month, Aviva transferred 1,600 employees in Bangalore from an outsourcing vendor, 24/7 Customer, to Aviva Global Services. It was the first move of its kind and size in the Indian business processing outsourcing industry, NASSCOM said.

Hartford, Conn. and Indianapolis - Two insurers—Travelers and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield—announced online tools for their customers. Hartford, Conn.-based Travelers announced new technology launches: Umbrella Wired and OSHA Recordkeeping, as a new component of e-CARMA.Umbrella Wired online software program is designed to simplify the rate, quote and bind process for agents who offer small commercial umbrella liability policies.

Toronto, Ontario - Pink Elephant, provider of IT management best practices, plans to launch ISO/IEC 20000 Essentials, a new course that will help organizations understand the benefits of adopting a quality approach to IT, as defined by the first global standard for IT Service Management, ISO/IEC 20000. Published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2005, ISO/IEC 20000 is directly linked to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the best practices framework that focuses on aligning IT with the business, resulting in greater productivity and reduced costs. Despite the many strategic advantages, implementing ITIL has also been met with several challenges; primarily, gaining both management and staff support for a process improvement project. "By demonstrating a commitment to quality IT service provision, organizations can gain a competitive edge through ISO/IEC 20000 registration. We're seeing more RFPs that include this standard as a prerequisite," says Pink Elephant president David Ratcliffe. "ISO/IEC 20000 also plays an important role in preparing organizations for audits. With these two benefits alone, the executive team and IT staff can make a clearer connection between ITIL and how it addresses actual business pressures and concerns." The new ISO standard also allows the organization at large to receive recognition for following ITIL best practices, whereas before only individual ITIL certification existed; therefore, ISO/IEC 20000 represents a level of excellence that can be felt across all departments and is not limited to IT or its ITIL-certified practitioners. Pink Elephant's ISO/IEC 20000 Essentials is aimed at: * IT department staff of an organization that is considering or is already ISO/IEC20000 certified, so as to understand the breadth, depth and integration between the processes; * Contracts managers looking to construct RFPs to include ISO/IEC20000; the course will help explain what is involved in the standard; * Senior IT Managers, who will understand the importance of adopting a quality approach to Service Management and understand the value of ISO/IEC20000 accreditation; * Anyone involved in service provision; this course will show how ISO/IEC20000 will enable you to transform the service provision using best practice from ITIL and ISO9000. More information about course dates and locations, and in-house deliveries, will be available soon. Please visit www.pinkelephant.com for the latest updates or call 1-888-273-7465. For more information about ISO/IEC 20000, please visit www.iso.org. Source: Pink Elephant

Chicago - Multinational corporations are facing increasingly diverse, complex and exotic risks, and may not have all the resources in place to manage them effectively, according to a global risk management survey conducted by Aon, a Chicago provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, human capital and management consulting, and specialty insurance underwriting. More than half of the survey's respondents said they weren't prepared for the risk they rated as most worrisome -- damage to reputation. "Executives now see reputation as a major source of competitive advantage," said Ruth Joplin, Aon Global Risk Consulting managing director. "While intangible, reputation is one of the most important corporate assets and one of the hardest to protect," she added. "The lack of preparedness reported for this and other key risks is both surprising and somewhat worrying." Joplin says it should come as no surprise that business interruption was cited as the second key risk. "Preserving earnings power is clearly one of the top priorities of senior management," she said, "and there is a growing realization that the resulting loss of income following an event could pose a greater threat than the physical damage itself. While 70% of respondents reported being prepared, it is perhaps even more telling that 30% are not." Survey responses suggest that third party liability risk concerns have arisen as a result of the encroachment of U.S.-style litigiousness into other geographies. "The 'compensation culture' is gaining a stronger global foothold," Joplin said. Rounding out the top five risk concerns, based on the survey's results, is distribution or supply chain failure, and market environment. Lack of preparedness for these risks is reported at 37% and 65%, respectively. What does this mean? "There is clearly more work to be done," said Joplin. "Dealing with these and future risk trends will require innovative, forward-looking solutions." Other top ten risk concerns rated by survey respondents are, in order, regulatory changes, failure to attract or retain staff, financial risk, physical damage and mergers and acquisitions and disaster recovery plan failure are tied for tenth place. Ranking Risk/description 1 - Damage to reputation 2 - Business interruption 3 - Third party liability 4 - Distribution or supply chain failure 5 - Market environment 6 - Regulatory/legislative changes 7 - Failure to attract or retain staff 8 - Market risk (financial) 9 - Physical damage 10 - Merger/acquisition/restructing 11 - Failure of disaster recovery plan Joplin says that that Americas is the only region where technology failure and loss of data are cited as a major risk concern, while Europe uniquely cites mergers/acquisitions/restructuring and Asia/Pacific is highly concerned with weather/natural disasters. Risk managers in the Americas tend to rely heavily on senior management intuition and experience to identify major risks as compared to other regions that rely more on business unit registers. The survey also indicates that corporate boards recognize the criticality of risk management and are engaged in the review of risk issues. Respondents reported identifying and understanding their risks is a top priority and many planned to take a more enterprise-wide approach to risk within the next two years. "By taking a more integrated, systematic approach to managing risk," Joplin said, "organizations can begin to actively start turning risk into opportunity." Aon's Global Risk Management Survey 2007 was conducted in late 2006 and early 2007 by Aon Global Risk Consulting, and is based on responses from 320 organizations in 29 countries. The Web-based survey, aimed at risk managers, CFOs, treasurers and others responsible for risk, addressed both qualitative and quantitative risk issues. Insight is provided by region, revenue and industry. Source: AON Corp.

Charlottesville, Va. - SNL Financial LC, a Charlottesville, Va.-based business intelligence provider, reached an agreement with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), Kansas City, Mo., to acquire and publish statutory insurance data through SNL's database products.Statutory insurance data consists of detailed financial and operating data filed quarterly for more than 5,000 public and private insurance companies, including: line-of-business results, market share and geographic exposure, relevant calculated ratios, investment portfolio statistics, loss triangles, reinsurance relationships and more.

Hartford, Conn. - With the recent sale of a small business policy to Creative Music Adventures of Seattle, Wash., The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. now maintains one million small-business policies in force across the country."This is an outstanding achievement for The Hartford," says Jim Ruel, senior vice president of small business insurance at The Hartford. "For years, we've been listening to what small business owners want, and then developing the right products and services to help our agents meet their clients' needs. Reaching this milestone in such a competitive market is a testament to our company's leadership and expertise in this field. As the number of small businesses in this country continues to increase, The Hartford will continue to find new ways to serve them."

Criminals can imitate public or private Wi-Fi services to lure unsuspecting consumers and businesses into an ID theft nightmare, says TraceSecurity, a Baton Rouge, La., provider of security compliance management.

Atlanta - A disk containing the personal information of 2.9 million Georgia residents has gone missing, state health officials say.

New York - Parents can track the whereabouts of teenage drivers with the help of a global positioning system about to undergo testing by New York-based AIG Auto Insurance.