Analytics

DIRECT MARKETING TOOL ENHANCEDMelissa Data announced the addition of multi-platform capabilities to the Canadian Address Object, a complementary product to the Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif. company's Data Quality Suite, a direct-marketing tool that verifies and corrects address, phone and contact data.

With so much business conducted via the Internet, executives at Winged Keel Group Inc. decided the staff had to save each-and-every e-mail message, simply to keep the boutique life insurance and long-term disability firm on the right track."We are a technologically advanced company, so a lot of our business was being conducted via e-mail," says Pramod Navani, managing director of operations at the New York-based insurer. "A few years ago, our company instituted a rule that no one was allowed to delete e-mails."

STRATEGIC GOALS GUIDE IT SPENDINGSenior insurance IT executives are making strategic investments, but budgets and staff size are generally flat or growing only modestly.

European and Asian life insurers are outpacing their North American counterparts at streamlining and centralizing policy administration systems-the core systems that support and deliver insurance products for their customers, according to a global survey of more than 100 insurance technology professionals commissioned by Bermuda-based Accenture.Globally, respondents that have consolidated their policy administration systems on average reported a 19% reduction in operating costs, a 25% reduction in IT costs and a 35% increase in the speed at which they introduce products.

INSURER AUTOMATES INTERNAL CONTROLSPhysicians Mutual, based in Omaha, Neb., selected OpenPages FCM for its financial controls management initiatives. OpenPages FCM is an enterprise financial controls management solution designed to reduce time and resource costs associated with ongoing financial reporting regulations. It is expected to reduce Physician Mutual's time and costs associated with efforts to comply with changes to National Association of Insurance Companies financial reporting regulations. "OpenPages allows us to automate our ongoing assessment and monitoring of internal controls and ensure that compliance initiatives align with our business strategy," says Barbara Bergmeier, senior vice president of internal audit, Physicians Mutual.

Unwilling to deal with the tribulations of converting to new IT hardware, many insurance companies cling to legacy systems despite inconvenience, high costs, inflexibility and a decided lack of nimbleness.And the consequences of relying upon past-its-prime hardware and operating systems don't end there, according to Chad Hersh, a senior analyst for the Boston-based research and consulting firm Celent LLC and author of the report "Legacy and Mainframe Migration: An Insurance Imperative."

A policy administration system (PAS) used to perform limited activities: rate, issue and maintain property/casualty policies in volume. Working almost in isolation, it was attended solely by the hierarchy of underwriters and policy processors. No one else could touch it; any attempt to mess with such a core system was deemed too risky. Mainframe and client-server applications also limited functionality and ease of use.Web-based systems changed everything, resulting in more demand from captive and independent agents and managing general agencies for access to quoting, rating and even issuance. Claims adjusters and third-party administrators also wanted more access to policy data.

Cambridge, Mass. - In the 1980s, with a few exceptions, CEOs perceived information technology/business technology (IT/BT) as an important underpinning of company operations, but not as a critical strategic tool, according to George Colony, chairman of the Board and CEO at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc.

Chicago - Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) of Illinois announced that it plans to expand its e-prescribing initiative throughout Illinois. This follows on a plan BCBS announced in January in which the Anthem BCBS group would expand the effort in Ohio.

New York - Look for accelerated growth this year of the outsourcing trends that predominated in 2006: Expansion of business process outsourcing (BPO), the maturing of the offshore market and more multi-sourcing at the expense of single, one-off “mega-deals.”