Digital Platforms

Insurers may be interested to learn how banks are using cloud to manage their disaster recovery needs.

A new report notes life insurers are investing in purpose-built underwriting solutions to help contain costs and reduce cycle times.

The most severe earthquake to hit New Zealand in 80 years seen as the most expensive natural disaster since Hurricane Ike hit the United States in 2008.

Independent financial advisers say that improving efficiency and time management is a goal for 2011, and carriers can help them achieve it.

Organizations have not yet automated many of the data integration and sales analytics operations needed, Ventana says.

Business analytics portfolio gets in-memory, integration and mobile add-ons.

Lawmakers set a series of ambitious deadlines, requiring regulators to complete roughly 170 new rules by July.

Survey finds cloud emerging as new outsourcing platform.

Organizations that transmit or modify protected health information for covered entities now are covered under the HITECH Act’s strengthened provisions of the HIPAA privacy and security rule.

A.M. Best, Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's announced ratings updates. The following are some of the most recent:

The company’s edgeConnect user experience platform joins other insurance solutions chosen to provide building blocks designed to help insurers to transform their business processes.

A.M. Best report reveals hopeful signs in the industry’s capital position and liquidity, but warns of interest rate-related risks.

American subsidiary of Japanese insurance giant selects hosted solutions to enter markets in multiple states.

Large sports cars have the highest average collision claims costs and passenger vans have the lowest, notes the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

HP software to help State Auto Group improve policyholder communications.

AXA, ING, Marsh and Swiss Re all released their year-end numbers.

ETran to provide robust, yet flexible, solution to meet needs of Mutual of Omaha.

Benchmark study shows health insurers rank last among 17 industries, including auto, homeowner and life insurers, in customer loyalty.

Amica Mutual, USAA among insurers on J.D. Power and Associates’ list of 40 service champions.

Lincoln Financial fined $600K for failure to protect customer information from public access.

MBIA Inc. and Assured Guaranty Ltd. claim they were tricked by banks into insuring toxic residential mortgage-backed securities.

Although nine insurer groups experienced asbestos and environmental (A&E) losses of at least $100 million during 2009, up from six groups in 2008, the increase is still “manageable,” notes A.M. Best.

Global financial institutions need to get up to speed with appropriate technologies and procedures to protect their organizations from a rising tide of payments fraud, says fraud and detection expert Dena Hamilton.

Policy admin, agent portals and business intelligence (BI) top insurers’ priority lists for 2011, all with a goal of improving business agility, insights and service quality, according Novarica’s 2nd annual “state of the industry” report.

Insurer says JP Morgan knowingly sold risky mortgage-backed securities.

Web-based service VTXcompare created to mitigate risks inherent to changes in data.

Despite many major analyst firms' estimates of slight increases in IT spend for 2011, Matthews International Capital Management believes they're thinking way too conservatively.

How do insurers compete? How will they grow top-line revenue and market share? And where will their growth come from in 2011? The nature of these questions may elicit familiar discussion among insurance business line executives, yet three insurance technology executives lent their views to these subjects and more at the Celent 2011 Insurance CIO Roundtable last week in New York.

Results of a new survey indicate customers are willing to pay more for simpler products and experiences, but rate insurance last, viewing it as the most complex of all industries.

U.S. insurers can't ignore E.U. actions in an era of harmonizing global regulations.

According to a survey, 64.3% of insurance producers do not follow up on prospective customer lists at least once per week, and nearly 16% do not employ a pipeline management system.

Read daily recaps of how Watson is faring against Jeopardy!'s two greatest champions.

Elizabeth Warren's comments came even as House Financial Services Committee Chair Spencer Bachus questioned her role at the CFPB.

Insurers and agents may want to keep an eye on how their financial services brethren are serving their clients via the mobile space.

No going back from a wireless world; research says 2011 is tipping point of consumer devices in the enterprise.

Fitch and S&P react to AIG’s $4.1B charge for Q4; S&P clarifies Allstate’s rating after announcement that it's exiting the banking business; A.M. Best, Moody’s and S&P assign ratings to CNA’s forthcoming senior unsecured notes.

The Dutch financial services firm reportedly is considering IPOs in Europe and the United States for its insurance operations; struck two deals to divest its real estate investment management business.

Computer’s appearance on “Jeopardy!” offers glimpse of future business functionality.

The CMO Council researched the misalignment, and found isolation and mutual distrust in both camps.

Insurance professionals who want to stop the unauthorized flow of data to criminal sources should start by looking within their own enterprises.

In the first three quarters of last year, bank holding companies tallied $9.73 billion in insurance brokerage fee income—up 7% from the same period in 2009.

The administration will issue a "financial crisis responsibility fee" of $30B on institutions with more than $50B of assets that took TARP money to be paid over the next 10 years.

Just in time for Valentine’s Days, a study finds 29% of American drivers have engaged in romantic contact while driving.

To navigate through the changing market, insurers will think, act and spend differently in 2011.

Insurer using iPipeline’s cloud to integrate iGO e-App data into back-end systems to speed processing.

Pacts forged with MarketSpace and Kinetic Analysis.

The U.S. property and casualty market appears to be experiencing a scene from the movie “Groundhog Day,” operating in a market where little has changed from a year ago, notes A. M. Best in its 2011 Review & Preview report for the insurance industry. How P&C carriers may respond, however, reflects a market where change will be mandatory.

Broker-dealers and advisers must not only learn to appreciate social media, but be willingness to actively use it in order to woo this client base.

MedRisk's new RIBI unit is set to roll out a new reporting platform featuring state-of-the-art graphics and outcomes analytics.

Allstate, Aon, CNA, Humana all released their year-end numbers.

VPs of IT will see salary spikes, while CIOs and database administrators’ salaries will remain flat.

What the SEC says and thinks it wants and what will most likely materialize figures to be a much different story.