Digital Platforms

Encinitas, Calif.-based Work Loss Data Institute (WLDI) released its 2012 State Report Cards for Workers’ Comp this week. The report, which is used to track trends and give states a grade and tier ranking based on their performance, now includes data from a 10-year period. Forty-three states are covered, plus Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

MetLife Inc. took a step closer to exiting the banking business Tuesday by announcing that it is selling the bulk of its deposits to GE Capital Finance Inc.

American International Group Inc. CEO Robert Benmosche reportedly told the company’s directors that he would like to hold on to his position longer than he previously planned, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website.

With another stroke of the pen, President Obama signed a continuing resolution that keeps the troubled National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) alive until May 31, 2012. The program had been scheduled to expire at midnight on December 23.

Recent calculations from ISO and PCI indicate insurers faced extreme headwinds in their core business—underwriting.

With a net income decrease of over $20 billion and an increase in statutory combined ratio of over 8 percentage points based on year-to-year comparisons of the first nine months of 2010 and 2011, the P&C sector continues to weather a tumultuous storm. High natural catastrophe-related losses have devastated insurers bottom lines and decimated underwriting performance as a whole.

In the face of the NTSB's recommended ban, auto manufacturers are gung-ho about adding more connectivity in the car.

Allstate Insurance Co. is seeking to recover $6.3 million against 83 New York-area defendants in its seventh insurance fraud lawsuit of 2011. The complaint, filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and principles of common law, alleges that the defendants engaged in separate, but parallel, schemes in which fraudulent and misleading bills were submitted to Allstate for durable medical equipment, medical supplies and orthotic devices.

A call for the revision of a federal law, which allows risk retention groups (RRG) to operate nationally when licensed in a single state, has been lodged by National Risk Retention Association General Counsel Robert Myers, Jr.

Aon Corporation has agreed to pay the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) approximately $16.3 million as part of a settlement related to charges of foreign bribery.

Insurers are skeptical about the cloud, but new developments could lend hope to a secure future.

Priority Data has added four township mutual partners in Minnesota. In October, Priority Data launched Farm and Home quoting for North Branch Mutual. The company says it also has signed agreements with Sverdrup Mutual, Madelia-Lake Crystal Mutual, and Has San Lake Mutual to launch quoting, rating and underwriting solutions in the first quarter of 2012.

With the stroke of a pen on Saturday, President Obama signed a continuing resolution that bought the troubled National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) another week of funding.

As the rulemaking phase of the Dodd-Frank Act continues, insurers are looking to shape the rules to determine which companies constitute a systemic risk to the larger economy.

Regardless of external factors, companies engaging in M&A activity generally outperform the Global MSCI Index by 2.9 percent based on year-to-date statistics from 2011.

The insurance industry experienced decent top-line growth, fairly resilient margins and increased capital management in 2011. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods expects it to continue into 2012 and stocks will be traded more in line with fundamentals next year.

GlobalOptions will serve as the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) provider to Argo Group US Inc., an international underwriter of specialty insurance and reinsurance products to P&C markets, and its subsidiaries.

JEVCO Insurance Co., a specialty insurer, is in production with ClaimCenter, the claims management solution from Guidewire Software, a provider of core system software to P&C insurers.

Talend, an open-source software company, says BF&M Insurance, a Bermuda insurance group, has added ESB Enterprise Edition to its portfolio of Talend integration solutions.

The Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) responded to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) call for a national ban on the use of cell phones while driving by commending the attention being given to the issue of distracted driving. The association also asserts the fact that cell phones are only one source of distraction for American drivers.

Swiss Re predicts that 2011 will rank as the most expensive year ever for the insurance industry. The insurer's sigma team estimates total insured losses for the global industry from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters will reach $108 billion. This is more than double 2010’s losses, which were $48 billion.

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) may be heading for another lapse, subsumed in high-stakes political brinkmanship.

A report issued by the consumer group Center for Justice and Democracy at New York Law School claims that carriers are planning to price-gouge buyers of insurance, particularly commercial lines insureds. The report, “Repeat Offenders: How the Insurance Industry Manufactures Crises and Harms America,” asserts that insurers are in collusion to create a hard market in which commercial lines insurers can target their customers with large rate increases.

After looking at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's 2012 Top Safety Pick list—the longest ever at 115—it’s clear that automakers have made vast design improvements during the past year. Sixty-nine cars, 38 SUVs, five minivans and three pickups earn the designation for 2012. Eighteen of the recipients—10 of which are Honda/Acura models—are new to the winner’s circle. And again this year, every major automaker has at least one winner. At 15, Toyota/Lexus/Scion has the most winners for 2012, followed by General Motors with 14, Volkswagen/Audi with 13, and Ford/Lincoln and Honda/Acura each with 12.

Credit and information management firm TransUnion released end of third-quarter results of its proprietary Auto Insurance Risk Index, noting a slight increase of 0.03 percent after four consecutive quarterly declines. The index now registers 98.85, three basis points higher than Q2 2011; 31 basis points lower than a year ago at this time; and 73 basis points lower than its recessionary peak in Q2 2009.

Emergency Physicians Insurance Company RRG (EPIC) and Echo Ridge Partners have implemented iCatalyst, a policy and claims management system designed to streamline processes and improve customer service throughout an entire policy lifecycle.

From a catastrophe-loss standpoint, 2011 is more likely to be remembered for the variety and frequency of loss events rather than a singular catastrophe.

Professional insurance agents have what insurance customers are looking for, according to research results issued by the PIA Partnership. The PIA Partnership is a group of insurance companies that works collaboratively with PIA National to conduct research and develop tools and resources designed to benefit professional independent insurance agents. PIA is a national trade association that represents member insurance agents and employees who sell and service all kinds of insurance.

Amica Mutual received the top honor for overall excellence from InsuranceQuotes.com’s inaugural Insurance Quality Awards.

The insurance industry showed strong support for The National Transportation Safety Board after it announced yesterday that it recommends all 50 states and the District of Columbia pass legislation banning the non-emergency use of portable electronic devices by motorists while driving.

The National Transportation Safety Board said today that texting, emailing or using a cell phone while driving has been proven to be too dangerous to be allowed anywhere, and recommends that all states impose a total ban, except for emergencies. The recommendation would also apply to hands-free devices, the federal safety board said.

On the heels of reports coming out of Washington on the government’s scramble to protect the country’s power grid from cybercriminals, CSC reports the launch of an Insurance Cybersecurity Advisory Council for life insurance and annuity providers and property/casualty insurers. The goal of the council is to facilitate the development of best practices and technology strategies that effectively mitigate the risk of cyber attacks on the insurance industry.

The International Underwriting Association has established an enhanced lobbying presence in the Americas, the group reports.

More evidence of a hardening market has arrived via the most recent Commercial Lines Insurance Pricing Survey (CLIPS) from Towers Watson.

For the second straight year, MetLife leads life insurers in annuity considerations through the first three quarters, ended Sept. 30, 2011. Prudential Financial and Jackson National Life Group round out the top three in the rankings released by SNL.

According to data from ACSI LLC, P&C insurers are improving customer satisfaction, while life insurers are steady and health insurers are slightly declining. For its American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), ACSI annually conducts interviews with approximately 70,000 consumers and plugs the information into an econometric model to measure satisfaction with a wide range of industries, products and large companies. The results are released on a monthly basis, with all measures reported using a scale of 0 to 100, and this month it was the insurance industry’s turn.

Risks continue to outweigh the benefits when it comes to implementing technologies of convenience behind the wheel.

United Automobile Insurance Co. (UAIC), a privately held P&C insurer specializing in auto insurance, has deployed BillingCenter as its billing management system. BillingCenter is a product of Guidewire Software, a provider of core system software to P&C insurers.

While the insurance industry was an early adopter of mobile technology for basic communication functions, it has lagged in developing and implementing internal and customer-facing applications.

Rising rates in some market segments is attributing to a newly bullish outlook on the financial prospects of insurers.

Given the tough pricing environment, skittish capital markets and litany of catastrophe losses seen in 2011, it’s hard to regard the present as a golden age for reinsurers.

The industry constantly hears about the problem of retiring knowledge workers and that young people aren’t drawn to insurance careers. The Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of New York (IIABNY) is doing something about it. On December 7 the association hosted more than 50 high school students who participated in InVEST, an insurance industry classroom-to-career education program.

Experts say thanks to a dearth of Federal support, it isn’t a stretch to imagine a power grid cyber attack that takes out the Internet, grinding communications and businesses to a halt in the process.

Columbus Life Insurance, a provider of retirement, estate planning and advanced business planning services, has selected iGO e-App to automate and streamline business processes for independent producers. iGO is a product of iPipeline, a creator of marketing, selling and processing solutions for insurance carriers, distributors and producers.

While insurance products are inherently complex, interacting with insurance companies should not be.

ingenie is a new online car insurance brand targeting young drivers in the United Kingdom, aged 17 to 25, who have been priced off the road by rocketing car insurance costs. Those costs have seen the 17 to 22 age bracket now paying a typical annual premium of £2,431 ($3,805), up 64 percent when compared to 2010 figures.

COUNTRY Financial, out of Bloomington, Ill., has licensed the PolicyWriter software suite from Adaptik Corp. to serve as the heart of its next generation personal lines policy administration platform, the companies report.

With another expiration of funding for the National Flood Insurance Program looming, a continuing resolution to keep the program afloat has passed the Senate by unanimous consent.

Warm weather offers favorable conditions for car thieves, while holidays and cold weather bode well for potential victims, according to a new report from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB).

Despite high levels of unemployment, U.S. business leaders say one of the biggest risks they’re facing is a talent and skills shortage, according to the 2011 Lloyd’s Risk Index.

As an IT solution for complex integration, service-oriented architecture (SOA) has seen success in some insurers’ organizations. However, from a business and architecture perspective, it leaves more to be desired, according to a new report issued today by Boston-based research and consulting firm Celent.

In 2012, the U.S. life and annuity insurance industry will be challenged to find ways to manage both capital and risk in an economically and politically uncertain year, while continuing to lay the groundwork for future growth, according to Ernst & Young's new Global Insurance Center U.S. Outlook report.