Distribution

PORTLAND, Ore.-- Standard Insurance Company, a subsidiary of StanCorp Financial Group, Inc., today announced the release of The Standard Select(SM) suite of insurance products, which feature enhancements to the company's Group Life, Long Term Disability (LTD) and Short Term Disability (STD) insurance options for small businesses.

Nothing tests the resolve of an insurance company's claims processing division more dramatically than a natural catastrophe.Typically, one natural disaster is enough to test the capabilities of the most competent claims units, but when four hurricanes struck the Southeast during a six-week period between August 13 and late September, it proved to be an unprecedented succession of disasters, insurers concur.

Insurance companies have been battling for high rankings on the search engines for years. Now, making an end-run around the search engine wars by simply paying for placement.With these firms, the game is no longer who is best at coding search-engine friendly pages. Instead, it's who is willing to bid the most for the most popular keywords used by people searching for insurance on the Web.

With the stakes--and their IT investments--high, many insurers have made it clear they aren't ready, willing or able to discard their legacy systems and migrate their applications completely to newer platforms.

When you're running an insurance company with a business model based on Internet distribution, you need to develop a top-notch Web site. That was management's goal when online insurer Esurance Inc. was launched in 2001 at the height of the dot-com bubble, and that's still the company's intention today.Esurance has implemented two new Web technologies over the past year to keep its Web site running smoothly and enable customers to effortlessly contact a service representative when they encounter a problem.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--Workscape, Inc., a proven provider of outsourced benefits and workforce management solutions, today announced the introduction of its new nationwide partner program. Known as the Workscape Broker Alliance Program, it is available to insurance brokers and consultants that service employers with greater than 2,500 benefits-eligible employees and wish to supplement their offering with Workscape's benefits administration solution, OneForce/Benefits.

HARTFORD, Conn.-- MassMutual Financial Group today introduced Web-based enrollment for its Strategic Edge group universal and group variable universal life insurance products, making participant enrollment fast, easy and accurate.

WARREN, N.J.--The Chubb Corporation today reported that net income in the third quarter of 2004 was $364.0 million or $1.88 per share, compared to $259.8 million ($1.37 per share) in the third quarter of 2003.

LOUISVILLE, Ky.-- In response to the growing need for affordable health benefit plans for small and mid-size employers, Humana Inc. today launched SmartExpress, a family of health insurance plans designed for businesses with 2 to 299 employees that want to better control and predict health care costs while giving their employees expanded benefits and a better health plan experience.

Newark, Calif.-- Risk Management Solutions (RMS), the world's leading provider of products and services for the management of catastrophe risk, is now offering software developer tools for its RiskLink and RiskBrowser systems. The RiskTools software development kit allows companies to efficiently integrate key components of RMS products into their internal underwriting and portfolio management systems, allowing users to access RMS decision support tools via internal system interfaces.