Analytics

What do agents want from their agency management systems? In its "Agency Technology Survey-Executive Summary," ACORD Corp.'s ACORD User Group Information Exchange (AUGIE) set out to answer this question and reveal other agency technology needs."The survey shows that many agents are frustrated with the process of having to go from Web site to Web site to get quotes-a process some liken to the situation 15 or 20 years ago, when we moved within our agencies from one company-provided terminal to the next," says Lisa Leach Goth, vice president of New Bethlehem, Pa.-based Charles P. Leach Agency and chair of the survey working group. She sees the survey findings as encouragement for carriers to support more uniform processes that work through the agent's own system.

Not so long ago, discussions of IT security tended to focus on the need to install firewalls; to tunnel via private networks; to employ encryption keys and digital certificates; to surround servers with multiple layers of access; and to install firewalls, sandboxes and "demilitarized zones" to snag hackers.Those tools and methods remain critical, but many in the IT community are recognizing the importance of addressing physical as well as digital vulnerabilities.

MASSMUTUAL UPGRADES PRODUCT MACHINE SOFTWAREThe disability income insurance area of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. (MassMutual), Springfield, Mass., upgraded to version 3.1 of Product Machine, a set of tools designed to enable users to build, design and publish products.

London - Senior executives and risk professionals consider data loss the most significant threat and key issue to address in operational risk management planning, according to a global risk briefing report conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and sponsored by London-based ACE European Group Ltd. (ACE).More than 40% of the 181 respondents said their organization focuses more on loss of data than other issues—including systems failure, human error and even natural disasters.

New York - Insurers are taking enterprise risk management (ERM) seriously, but many companies have begun ERM programs without taking the necessary step of getting management consensus on risk appetite.

Las Vegas - An Allstate executive is among the IT pros who have been named winners of the Pink Elephant Inc. 2007 IT Infrastructure Library Awards.

The metadata standards that streamline company-to-company communication can do double duty as prototypes for internal data management within a single insurance carrier."If it has already been invented in the industry, why should we think that we're going to be able to invent our own that's better?" reasons Rich Maynard, an enterprise architect for The Hartford Financial Services Group, Hartford, Conn. He's one of many insurance executives who view industry metadata standards that way.

Still in development, it doesn't have an official name, yet the ground swell for the electronic insurance exchange appears to be growing.Depending upon whom you ask, the "exchange" is the best technology for the insurance industry since the Internet, a "me-too" service that will only add complexity to the supply chain, or a behemoth to be reckoned with by carriers and producers alike.

Bring up the topic of Windows Vista in a crowded room of IT experts, and you're sure to get a variety of reactions and comments. People aren't shy about sharing their perceptions-positive or negative-about the new operating system from Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. Just search the term on the Internet, and you could be reading for weeks.After years of talk about Vista, Microsoft released the system to businesses on Nov. 30, 2006.

It took two centuries to fill the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with more than 29 million books and periodicals, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps and 57 million manuscripts.Today, it takes about 15 minutes for the world to churn out an equivalent amount of new digital information. It does so about 100 times every day, for a grand total of five exabytes annually.