Customer experience

Hartford, Conn., October 23, 2006 – To help agents speed up the decision process and provide quotes for eligible small business customers, Travelers Select Accounts division of Hartford, Conn.-based St. Paul Travelers Cos. Inc. has introduced TravelersExpress for Master Pac.TravelersExpress is an approach to processing new small commercial policy applicants because risk evaluation and pricing are delivered to the agent up front during the submission process. It will be available initially to agents in Illinois, Utah and Nevada and rolled out nationally in 2007.

Pearl River, N.Y. - To eliminate redundant information requests, the ACORD-User Groups Information Exchange (AUGIE) is promoting a new questionnaire form, available online, that lets independent agencies organize data commonly requested by carriers.The form, Agency Questionnaire (ACORD 812), was developed after agents and brokers expressed concern that too much time is spent filling out multiple questionnaires, according to AUGIE leaders. "Every carrier seems to ask agencies the same questions every year," says Jo Ann Litwin, who chaired the AUGIE working group that addressed the problem. "The questions are generally valid, but many are also redundant--from year to year and carrier to carrier."

New York - New York Life Insurance Co. has launched a Web site called www.nylcareersforwomen.com to provide information about careers in life insurance for women at all stages of professional development.The site offers details on opportunities in sales and field management. A questionnaire on the site helps readers assess their interest in a sales career. In addition, the site provides information about working for New

Los Angeles - Farmers Insurance Group of Cos. introduces its new Mobile Catastrophe Command Center bus, which is designed to help its customers immediately after a catastrophe that may strike anywhere in the contiguous United States."The new Farmers Mobile Command Center bus was chosen as the catastrophe center-point for handling claims and servicing our customers," explains Frank Soldano, state executive, Farmers Insurance Group, Kansas. "The bus is equipped with the most state-of-the-art equipment available anywhere in the United States. It will enable Farmers claims representatives to offer claims help to our customers immediately following a catastrophe," Soldano said.

New York and Saint Paul, Minn. – Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. (MetLife) and Travelers Insurance Group Holdings Inc. renewed their agreement to offer Synchrony absence management services.Synchrony combines group disability insurance and the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) administration from MetLife with workers compensation insurance and claim administration services from Travelers to deliver one, integrated approach that can help companies better manage employee absences whether due to occupational or non-occupational events and assist employees in returning to work as soon as medically appropriate. First offered by the two companies in 1998, Synchrony programs currently cover more than 180,000 employees.

Media, Pa. - A network of insurance and financial Web sites is creating an online national directory of business insurance agents, a move that observers are calling another ripple in a movement to expand insurance distribution on the Internet.

Hamilton, Bermuda - Big European insurance companies are embracing industrial operating models to cut costs and improve customer service, according to an Accenture survey of senior executives at 30 carriers based in Europe.The survey revealed that 92% of respondents are assigning high priority to "industrialization"--the use of standardized operating and production platforms similar to those used by manufacturers. The rest of the respondents--the other 8%--say they expect industrialization to become a priority in the next three years.

Houston - The insurance industry, where companies face an average of 1,696 lawsuits, spanning product liability and environmental class actions to directors and officers claims, and even coverage fights over hurricanes and terrorist attacks, faces the most litigation when compared to other industries, according to a survey from international law firm Fulbright & Jaworski LLP, headquartered in Houston. Retailers and energy firms reported average caseloads north of 330 per company, which doesn't even come close to the insurance industry.In its third annual survey of corporate litigation trends—pulling data from 422 in-house law departments worldwide—Fulbright found that U.S. companies face an average of 305 pending lawsuits internationally. For large U.S. companies—those with $1 billion or more in annual gross revenue—the number of lawsuits soared to 556 cases, with an average of 50 new disputes emerging each year for close to half of them.

Darien, Ill.-based Insure.com Inc.'s Web site has been named a "best site" for life insurance quotes by Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine.The citation came in a special report called "The Best List" that appears in the November 2006 issue.

Two celebrated anti-aging experts are joining Humana Inc. in what the company calls a multi-media campaign to turn passive healthcare users into active healthcare consumers.