Customer experience

Remember the old days of paying an electric bill or making a car payment-writing out a check, putting the bill and check into the provided envelope, slapping a first-class stamp on it and tossing it in the mailbox? Thanks to technology, much has changed, and the insurance industry is changing right along with it.The process of paying bills online has been catching on for consumers over the past few years. And, according to a recent Computer Sciences Corp., El Segundo, Calif., survey conducted by Columbia, S.C.-based MarketSearch Corp., car and homeowner insurance customers would be willing to pay their insurance bills over the Internet.

From call centers to data centers, the insurance industry continues to turn to outsourcing in an effort to manage costs and secure access to resources. Information technology assets have become vital to ongoing operations and new growth, making these outsourcing relationships more than technology arrangements-they are now critical to business success. Combined with new regulatory mandates, this trend may be forcing carriers to push deeper and engage more proactively with outsourcing vendors.IT industry analyst firm Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn., calculates that outsourcing will capture up to 33% of all IT services spending across industries by 2008-up from 26% in 2003. The analyst firm also predicts the insurance sector will be spending more than $10 billion on outsourced services by that time.

Competition, regulatory compliance and cost cutting still drive life insurance product lifecycle management (PLM).To remain competitive in an economy with a demographic of escalating baby boomer prospects, developing and maintaining a constant flow of new product offerings requires agility, expert communication between work groups and technology to support the effort.

SAFECO NAMES WILLIAM JENKS AS CIO

NEW CSF DESIGNER FEATURESMetavante Corp., Milwaukee, has added a number of features to its CSF Designer document composition application:

For many insurance companies, the challenges involved in processing claims are ongoing. Because claims often involve multiple decisions, data from various sources, and task handoffs, it's clear why carriers see the potential for improved customer service and financial results from streamlining manual claims processing.After recognizing many opportunities to automate its manual processing decisions, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC), headquartered in Durham, decided to dive right in. "We process more than 30 million claims annually, and about 12% have to be manually handled in some fashion," explains Sherman Owens, BCBSNC vice president, quality and compliance. "As you can imagine, there's a lot of costs associated with that."

The NAIC formation of a task force to examine climate change comes on the heels of devastating back-to-back hurricane seasons that caused a record $30 billion in U.S. insured losses in 2004 and as much as $60 billion in insured losses from Hurricane Katrina alone in 2005. Insurance Networking News magazine recently interviewed Tim Wagner, director of the Nebraska Department of Insurance, who is co-leading the task force, to find out what the NAIC hopes to achieve.INN: Who at the NAIC became aware of the issue, and how was it pushed forward on the agenda?

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.

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.

Boston - AIR Worldwide Corp. (AIR) released Version 8.0 of CLASIC/2, CATRADER, and CATStation, AIR's catastrophe risk management systems. The version 8.0 releases include updates to several of AIR's catastrophe models and a number of software enhancements to make catastrophe analyses more efficient.