Analytics

Last year was a turning point for cyber attacks. It was the year when the predominant threats on the Internet transitioned from being perpetrated by hobbyist hackers to criminals.This is according to a recent report issued by Counterpane Internet Security Inc., a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of network protection services, and MessageLabs Ltd., a provider of messaging security with regional headquarters in New York City.

For some time now, insurance companies have made technology investments a priority. The result? Instead of disparate, paper-based information residing in hard-to-access metal file cabinets, all kinds of e-data languish in disconnected computer systems.Now, insurance companies are realizing that if they do not find a better way to use this data, the whole foray into information technology might go for little more than naught. That's where performance management "scorecard" systems come into play.

ADOBE, ITEMFIELD JOIN FORCES ON E-FORMS DEALItemfield, a San Mateo, Calif., provider of data transformation software, will work with San Jose-based Adobe Systems Inc., to develop a solution designed for the insurance industry. The companies plan to combine Adobe's intelligent forms, which support the ACORD XML data standard, with Itemfield's process-specific business rules and complex data transformation capabilities to help insurers increase efficiency by accelerating the processing of transactional data in electronic forms, such as quotations and new business submissions.

UNIVERSAL SIGNS SEVEN-YEAR BPO AGREEMENTUniversal Insurance of North America, Sarasota, Fla., has signed a seven-year agreement with CGI Group Inc. valued at between $45 and $75 million for policy and accounting business process services (BPS). Montreal-based CGI will process Universal's personal lines (book of business) including homeowners, dwelling-fire, auto, and umbrella in Texas and Florida. CGI will continue to support Universal's business processing needs as they expand their services into new markets. As part of this agreement, CGI will open a processing facility in Tampa to support Universal Insurance and other Florida-based insurance customers. CGI will initially hire 50 professionals and expects staff to grow to more than 200 professionals over the next two years.

Business rules have become a hot topic. At an industry event such as ACORD/LOMA, you'll hear many vendors talk about having business rules. We've all been here before; the buzz makes it hard for many of us to consider what we really need in those rules that help us automate processes such as claims and underwriting. Much of what we are struggling with is whether we should buy proprietary business rules capabilities that have been built into our applications, or if we should demand that our application vendors use enterprise-strength business rules solutions.Let's discuss the spectrum of what business rules can be. First, flexibility is important. At one extreme is the ability to change parameters, such as age, within the pre-defined rules for a given decision. At the other extreme are flexible solutions, where any new rule that relates to the problem can be added. The first is great when the rules are known, consistent and won't change. But, often the original application design doesn't consider industry, market and legal changes that cause us to have to define new rules we had not considered might be needed. As we have seen over the past 20 years, flexibility is critical to our ability to keep our application current.

Hamilton, Bermuda - Accenture Ltd. launched a technology delivery center in Pune, India, for software outsourcing and systems integration services. The facility is Accenture's ninth delivery center in India and represents further expansion of the company's Global Delivery Network.The new delivery center provides application outsourcing and systems integration services across the full range of technology capabilities. The center develops capabilities in enterprise technologies from Germany-based SAP and Siebel (Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif.); Net-centric technologies like Java and Microsoft; business intelligence and testing.

Las Vegas, Nev. - The Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), Pearl River, N.Y., released the first component of the ACORD Standards Framework, the organization announced at its annual meeting this week. The framework, an initial content release (ICR) of the single business data/information dictionary, brings together three groups of information:

Fremont, Calif. - A recent study on underwriting in the $222 billion commercial lines insurance industry has revealed that U.S.-based property/casualty insurers are taking new approaches to risk assessment and acceptance to sustain profitable growth in their business. The study, commissioned by Infosys Technologies Ltd. and conducted by TowerGroup, was designed to assess the strategic direction and readiness of the commercial underwriting market, from both business and technology perspectives.The study found that P&C commercial insurance companies are choosing to make the strategic shift toward "flow" and "transaction" underwriting to build competitive advantage and gain profitable market shares. Flow underwriting promotes straight-through underwriting for risk classes that were previously underwritten through manual, subjective evaluation by underwriters.

Edison, N.J. - Software and integration service provider MajescoMastek, the U.S. subsidiary of Bombay-based Mastek, will introduce an enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform for life and annuity companies next week at the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum in Las Vegas.

Redmond, Wash.-The life insurance division of Pacific Life Insurance Co., a Newport Beach, Calif.-based provider of life insurance products and services, selected Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. to help standardize Pacific Life's data infrastructure, reducing overall costs and bringing improved business intelligence (BI) capabilities to more than 800 employees nationwide.The company's life insurance division was faced with a strong dependency between business and IT workers. Executives, business analysts, finance personnel and customer service groups that rely on corporate data found it difficult to access and analyze important business information due to Pacific Life's complex data schema.