Distribution

Independent insurance distributors in seven western states now can get accurate Safeco auto and home insurance quotes without leaving their EZLynx Web portal at www.ezlynx.com.

BOSTON--John Hancock Life Insurance Company has quadrupled the long-term care insurance (LTCI) operations professionals who support the sale of its LTCI products from 6 staff members to 24. The expanded support enhances service for its existing LTCI channels including career agents, its national account team, managing general agents (MGAs) and banks, and allows the company to serve two new channels, brokerage general agents (BGAs) and broker-dealers.

BOSTON--The American Insurance Association (AIA) is pushing Congress for a two-year extension of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), an extension that AIA says will help avoid destabilizing the insurance market and the economy, and will enable policymakers to develop a more permanent solution for managing our nation's economic exposure to catastrophic terrorism.

WELLESLEY HILLS-- Sun Life Financial announced today that its U.S. Group Insurance Division has reorganized its distribution organization into six regions, a new structure necessitated by the rapid expansion of its division and the commitment to provide local service to brokers and customers. To lead operations in these new regions, Sun Life Financial has named four new regional vice presidents (RVPs), to serve alongside two existing RVPs. All six of the RVPs report to Drew Niziak, Vice President, Distribution.

Nationwide Financial is enabling its life agents and distributors to streamline business processes using a Web-based system from NaviSys Inc., Edison, N.J. The system enables Nationwide's distributors and agents--more than 15,000 producers--to use the Web-based tools to propose universal life, variable universal life, term and whole life products to their clients.Nationwide is upgrading its illustration system and will begin using the new system by early fall. Nationwide will also implement in 2005 another component of the NaviSys suite, a Web-based electronic application that uses reflexive questioning to capture the information required for underwriting and policy issue. The application automatically accepts data from the illustration system, so representatives will need to enter customer data only once.

Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA), a Washington, D.C.-based CEO public policy and advocacy group composed of security software, hardware and service vendors to address key cyber security issues, has released its recommendations for the development of a secure electronic health care system.These recommendations are designed to support the nation's first strategic framework report on a 10-year initiative to develop electronic health records and other uses of health information technology, which was announced today by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and David J. Brailer, M.D., Ph. D., the National Health Information Technology Coordinator.

Safeco today announced strong second-quarter results, reflecting the company's solid underwriting and the competitive strength of its automated sales platform. In addition, weather-related catastrophe losses were relatively light for the second quarter. The company posted net income of $247.5 million -- or $1.77 per diluted share. This represents an increase over second-quarter 2003 net income, which was $111.9 million--or $0.81 per diluted share.

A recent poll of more than 3,000 independent agents reveals that the overall ease of doing business is a critically important factor in choosing a carrier with which to place business. The survey, conducted by Deep Customer Connections, Inc. also revealed a widening gap between agents' expectations and carriers' performance. "The gap between expectations and performance tripled on five of the 10 factors of ease of doing business," noted Paul Croke, a founding partner for the Scituate, Mass.-based consulting firm. That occurred despite the fact that the insurance industry as a whole improved fractionally on all 10 ease of doing business factors. The Web survey was sent to over 40,000 independent insurance agencies and brokerages nationwide. There were nearly 3,200 responses with more than 100 different carriers being rated. The 10 ease of doing business factors identified by Deep Customer Connections are:

WebMD Corp., Elmwood Park, N.J., has released a white paper on the implementation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that concludes the law's administrative simplification provisions are increasing in complexity and costs for healthcare providers and payers across the country.The White Paper, which is the result of WebMD's analysis of HIPAA implementation nationwide, identifies concrete steps that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services can take to steer the implementation back on course, through what the company calls a "rational roll- out plan."

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Accenture are testing digital pen technology designed to help healthcare professionals capture and send medical claim information digitally. The solution, which is designed to complement physicians' hand-written claims process, was introduced in a two-phase pilot with Anthem plans in Indiana and Kentucky.In the first phase, health care professionals are using the pen to file claims electronically in conjunction with a desktop computer. Claims are written on specially designed digital paper forms that enable electronic data capture. The data is then uploaded electronically via a desktop computer to Anthem.