Digital Platforms

Insurer hopes that purchase will enhance its customer service, claim outcomes and overall efficiency.

Profiling rating solution providers, Novarica dissects the overall market as well as the individual components of solutions that make for effective purchases.

Panel representing hundreds of vendors and businesses engaged in cloud deployments globally discuss standards.

Novarica Research Council Impact Award Nominee of the Day: Employee input at CAMICO has led to 95 percent policy retention and 92 percent employee satisfaction among IT workers.

Insurer to implement FireLight, which is designed for electronic term life insurance business processing.

P&C insurer looks to investment accounting, reporting and analytics software in an attempt to achieve greater transparency, control and scalability.

Novarica Research Council Impact Award Nominee of the Day: Cincinnati Financial transforms independent agents’ process business using ACORD XML standards and real time from agency systems.

Acquisition of DaVinci Consulting Group to enhance long-term care insurance capabilities at Towers Watson.

GEICO has the simplest brand among U.S. insurers, according to Siegel+Gale released its 2012 U.S. and Global Brand Simplicity rankings today. GEICO, ranked 21 out of 125 U.S. brands, was the only insurer to be considered a “leader,” as Allstate, which was ranked 84th in the United States as the only other insurer listed, was the last brand included in the “middle of the pack” section.

American Safety Insurance (ASI) wanted to eliminate unnecessary manual tasks that were required to unify several stand-along legacy systems. Therefore, the insurer began an initiative in 2010 to consolidate all underwriting units across the company onto a single policy administration system, which included five components: a policy admin and rating system, agency and broker master file management technology, reporting software, document management software and forms generation technology, all from different vendors.

In a tough operating environment, the title insurance industry persevered with improvements in many major financial and operational categories in 2011, including composite ratio, and in a new special report, A.M. Best expects these successes to be surpassed in 2012.

Great American Insurance Group, nominated for a Practice award, wanted to create a competitive advantage and excellent customer experience by offering customer mobile applications to deliver self-service functionality.

Gallagher looks to Unison’s industry relationships to complement its employee benefits brokerage operation.

Provider of risk financing and loss prevention services for Texas municipalities calls on software provider in attempt to become more proactive with claims.

WellPoint Inc., the second-biggest U.S. health insurer, will reorganize into four business units in the first major move undertaken by interim Chief Executive Officer John Cannon.

As demand for mobile, big data, cloud and virtualization initiatives continues to grow, so does the demand for (and salaries of) qualified IT professionals.

Sentry Insight is designed to help companies and brokers manage, track and analyze claims.

Novarica Research Council Impact Award Nominee of the Day: Leveraging a project and portfolio management application, Erie Insurance took on a transformation initiative to track all costs across 13 discreet portfolios.

Insurers that have invested in analytics tools in the past year are just beginning to recognize their ability to manage producers and improve their performance with the technology.

Data and analytics at the top; staff development becoming more important, according to Novarica research reported at this week’s PCI Information Technology Conference.

Data and analytics at the top; staff development becoming more important, according to Novarica research reported at this week’s PCI Information Technology Conference.

While online resources continue to gain influence over consumers, agents and brokers remain the top resource overall.

Willis report finds weak economy, low underwriting losses and abundant capacity create mix of rates for commercial P&C carriers.

Strong third quarter earnings from P&C insurers is expected by Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

Insurer looks to e-Discovery software suite to advance its legal, IT infrastructure.

Allianz survey finds those ages 55 to 65 most concerned about rising healthcare costs and Social Security, regardless of political affiliations.

Newly formed Global Federation of Insurance Associations will comment on issues affecting the global insurance industry and its regulation.

Digital signatures brought to the cloud in support of E.U. eSignature laws.

Over the past five years, commercial auto insurance has experienced the most consistent underwriting results compared to other commercial lines and has generated better results than personal auto, despite the difference in the sizes of the markets, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings. Allstate Corp., Erie Insurance Group and Progressive have the strongest commercial auto underwriting margin over the last five years.

UnitedHealth Group Inc., the biggest U.S. health insurance company, agreed to pay about $4.9 billion to buy 90 percent of Amil Participacoes SA, a Brazil-based insurer and hospital chain that gives the American company a stake in the world’s second-biggest emerging economy.

Insurance software solutions provider Dovetail Insurance has won the Palmetto Pillar Award for cloud computing, which is sponsored by the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with the Columbia Information Technology Council. The award is intended to honor the Midlands' technology leaders, innovators and IT executives.

Insurer deploys the Toughbook mobile computers in all 50 states, enabling appraisers to write estimates on site and upload reports.

Potential voluntary federal guidelines foretell a future that may require keeping a close eye on the balance between collaboration and control.

The U.S. property and casualty sector’s profits got a boost in the first half of 2012, largely as a result of underwriting improvements resulting from a quiet catastrophe year to date. According to ISO, a Verisk Analytics company, and the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), private U.S. property/casualty insurers’ net income after taxes jumped to $16.4 billion in first-half 2012 from $4.8 billion in first-half 2011. Measuring insurers’ overall profitability as an annualized rate of return, policyholders’ surplus on average climbed to 5.9 from 1.7 percent.

Forecasted savings reached by 90 percent that adopt cloud technology.

More than half of U.S. insurers surveyed expect rise in personal property, workers' compensation and auto insurance fraud losses.

The global financial crisis and subsequent economic developments have brought to light critical weaknesses in existing hedge programs.

Based on a review of 35 major health plan websites, most issuers are still struggling to provide the Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC), even while the SBC provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) law took effect last week, according to Tyrula LLC. The law requires insurers to provide a paper SBC document within seven days of application, renewal, or the first day of coverage.

Program to provide review of building characteristics, factors that affect a building's wind resistance.

According to one Gartner analyst, precision, personalization and collaboration will motivate a new wave of business analytics.

The Federal Reserve sets January 5 as deadline for insurer to show it can handle severe economic stress.

Subscription service to track and review web resources for 16 providers of defined contribution plans, including ING, New York Life and Principal.

Two-thirds of life/annuity insurers plan to increase spending on analytics in the next two years as they seek to enhance the customer experience.

Surplus lines see spike in direct premiums written, experience turnaround as standard market insurers express the need to increase rates.

A new report from Forrester outlines potential mobile-enabled innovations and market transformations that could transform the insurance marketplace by 2020.

Spending is expected to nearly triple from current levels by 2016.

Insurer hopes e-signature capabilities will improve mobile distribution strategies, enable straight-through mobile processing.

Erie Insurance and IIHS study finds the teen driving death rate triple that of adult drivers.

ARCLand title specialists expect continuing growth and record premium levels for Q3 2012.

Stephen Halfpenny, formerly of Allstate and Munich Re, joins firm to lead Canadian business development.

By charting processes and performance as though it were a game, P&C and life insurers may have a cheap, engaging way to instill behavioral change within an organization.

J.D. Power 2012 Homeowner survey finds multi-policy owners most satisfied, but all add-on policies are not created equal in the retention equation.