Distribution

Much like soccer, the concept of bank insurance or "bancassurance" enjoys a much higher profile outside the United States than within.While the idea of banks offering insurance products is not new, in much of the world, the practice is, and has only taken off in the past two decades. In parts of Europe, such as France, Italy and Spain, the adoption of bank insurance has grown steadily as consumers have become accustomed to their bank as a distribution channel for insurance products.

XSELL RELEASES INSURANCE FRAMEWORX PLATFORMXSell LLC, a Jacksonville, Fla., provider of on-demand marketing solutions, released XSell's Insurance FrameworX, a version of its Web-based Customer Interaction Marketing platform.

If you've ever felt like your phone is ringing off the hook, you might want to consider the case of GEICO. The Chevy Chase, Md.-based auto policy giant communicates with its 7.4 million customers primarily through its call centers, which are located across the country. "Because GEICO is the fastest growing insurance company in the United States, we deal with a lot of pressure when we are handling the millions of phone calls that come in," Jess Reed, GEICO's chief information officer, tells Insurance Networking News.Indeed, given the company's direct-to-consumer model, the importance of its call centers, and the solutions that enable them, is difficult to overstate. To keep pace with the deluge of calls coming in on a daily basis, the company has long relied on help provided by telecom solutions provider AT&T, which, after a series of recent mergers, is now based in San Antonio, Texas. "It's an AT&T managed service that we overlay on top of a Cisco-based intelligent software manager," says Linda Poe, signature client director for AT&T.

London - Risk Management Solutions Inc. (RMS), a Newark , Calif. , provider of products and services for catastrophe risk management, launched a new initiative among six of Lloyd's largest managing agents this week designed to change the way exposure data is used in the London Market. The RMS London Market Data Community gives members access to data that has been standardized for use among the members. Data is prepared once by the RMS Data Cleansing Team, and then made available to the community, saving subscribers the time and money involved in preparing the information individually.

Boston - Electronic application submissions have grown dramatically since 2004 but still account for less than half of all new life/health business, according to a new report from Celent, a Boston-based financial research and consulting firm.

Southern California — Two major insurers are going the extra mile to help their policyholders affected by wildfires by deploying mobile response vehicles to the disaster area. Los Angeles–based Farmers Insurance Group of Cos. is helping thousands of its customers as they file claims and begin returning to their normal lives. Farmers is trying to make it as easy as possible to file a claim by continuing to offer mobile command centers and its Mobile Catastrophe Claims Bus to serve the most customers before they are allowed to return home.

Orlando, Fla., and El Segundo, Calif. - Applied Systems Client Network (ASCnet) and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) each awarded customers at their respective conferences.Chambersburg, Pa.'s Strickler Agency Inc. received the inaugural "Interface Agency of the Year Award" presented by ASCnet, the user group for Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based Applied Systems agency technology. The award was presented at the 22nd Annual Technology, Education & Networking Conference.

Reston, Va.–Insurance regulators in eight states have granted written recognition to the straight-through processing (STP) standards initiative of NAVA, the Association for Insured Retirement Solutions.

Mayfield Village, Ohio — The Progressive Group of Insurance Cos. yesterday introduced Paperless Policies, a feature that will allow customers who buy a policy directly from the company, or through one of its independent insurance agencies, the ability to reduce the amount of policy-related paper documents they receive. Having policy documents delivered electronically saves trees, expedites delivery of the documents and reduces the opportunity for misplaced documents, says the insurer.

Seattle and Madison, Wis. — A handful of U.S. auto insurers have begun offering in-car cameras or global positioning equipment to help parents monitor their teenagers' driving behavior, hoping to reduce the number of crashes involving young motorists.