Distribution

Boston - New York-based MetLife and Babson Executive Education held their second annual Thought Leadership Conference this week in Wellesley, Mass. The meeting brought together key players in the Internet and multi-channel marketing arena to discuss innovative practices for understanding the multi-channel marketing mindset.

Springfield, Mass. - MassMutual piloted its e4 Wireless Enrollment System with several plan sponsors and participant focus groups early this year, and so far, the results have been significant.In an effort to make retirement planning less overwhelming for participants and more action-oriented, MassMutual engaged Ameranth Wireless Inc., San Diego, to develop e4, MassMutual's custom Electronic Enhanced Enrollment Experience.

Springfield, Mass. - In its latest effort to provide women with comprehensive financial education, MassMutual Financial Group is targeting females with an online financial seminar designed to help them assess their personal finances and develop a long-term financial strategy.

Hartford, Conn. - Specialty Risk Services LLC (SRS), a property-casualty third party administrator for workers' compensation and general liability claims, is offering its clients access to a suite of tools to monitor their program's performance on its newly redesigned Web site.In SRS' password-protected Employer's Toolbox, clients have secure access to resources, including industry statistics, employee training materials, libraries of legislative and industry updates, loss control and safety tips, and links to national and industry Web sites.

Hartford, Conn. - Aetna is launching an online customer service program that lets consumers find out what they can expect to pay at the doctor's office before going in for a visit. The service will allow consumers to better estimate their out-of-pocket health care expenses by having online access to the actual discounted rates for up to 25 of the most common office-based services offered by their own primary care or specialist physician. The program will initially be piloted with information for approximately 600 distinct procedures provided by 5,000 individual physicians and physician groups in Cincinnati, Dayton and Springfield, Ohio, Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana.

Stamford, Conn., - While property and casualty insurers need to implement the same standards to provide real-time transactions for brokers and agents, survey results by Gartner, Inc. show that many insurers have been slow in offering the technologies necessary to implement these transactions.A Gartner survey of 72 members of the Council of Independent Agents and Brokers (CIAB) conducted between January and April of 2005 showed that agents and brokers prefer to do business with insurers that provide real-time transaction capabilities to better service policy holders. However, adoption of single-entry multiple-carrier interfaces (SEMCIs), which enable distributors to send and receive data seamlessly, continues to lag among insurers and distributors.

Hartford, Conn. - If small businesses always maintained the same workers, locations, fleet vehicles or inventories, then reporting changes for their premium audits would be easy. Reality, however, is quite different. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. has introduced an online Premium Audit Reporting tool that dramatically simplifies the process of submitting information to reconcile insurance premiums.Most commercial insurance premiums are provisional, calculated at the beginning of the policy year based on estimates of the business operations throughout the year. At the end of the policy year, the business's records are audited for changes that may affect the premium, including increases or decreases in payroll and sales. When the audit is complete, the premium is modified accordingly.

Brea, Calif. - XDimensional Technologies Inc., the provider of Nexsure, the Internet insurance agency management solution, and The Ohio Casualty Insurance Co., Fairfield, Ohio, have extended the inquiry services available on Nexsure."Our company is committed to providing cutting-edge technology to agents in order to help them succeed in the competitive marketplace," says John Kellington, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Ohio Casualty. "We work with innovative, proven vendors to help us achieve this goal. For example, agents using Nexsure from XDimensional Technologies and leveraging extended services are able to access a wider variety of information exactly when they need it, to speed business along. Specifically, Nexsure users are able to access selections of loss run and document retrieval information through this process. This provides an advantage over the traditional process, yielding a timely, accurate and convenient solution."

Northbrook, Ill. - Allstate Financial Corp. has launched a new illustration system for its variable annuity product line called ClearCast Illustrations. This new illustration system enables producers to create hypothetical views of the entire variable annuity product suite.ClearCast walks the user through the process of selecting features, riders and subaccounts. The system has several unique characteristics that include:

Jersey City, N.J. - ISO has acquired eLIENS, a unit of Xtria LLC. eLIENS provides lien holder and mortgagee notification services for insurance carriers. Xtria is an information technology and services company. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.Lending institutions that finance the purchase of autos, homes and other property typically require borrowers to maintain minimum levels of insurance coverage. As a lien holder or mortgagee to the property being insured, these lenders are entitled to receive many of the same notices that are sent to policyholders. The result for insurance companies is often a very paper- and labor-intensive notification process.