Insurance

Bellevue , Wash. - Symetra Life Insurance Co. launched a new product to help protect retirees from outliving their savings. With nearly $20 billion in assets, the Bellveue, Wash. , provider of retirement plans, employee benefits, life insurance and annuities issued the “Symetra Freedom Income Annuity,” which is designed to enable clients to use a small portion of current savings to buy guaranteed income for their later years of retirement.

Brookfield , Wis. , - Pekin Insurance Co., a provider of property, casualty, life, individual, business, and group products, plans to implement an advanced billing solution from Fiserv Inc., a Brookfield , Wis. , provider of technology solutions for the financial and insurance industries.

San Mateo, Calif. - The P&C companies of Unitrin, Inc., a Chicago-based $3 billion financial services company, will transition from less flexible mainframe and client/server claims systems to Guidewire’s ClaimCenter, the companies report.

Washington — Tough economic times give insurers all the more reason to be vigilant when it comes to fraud, and the FBI is helping with a new report based on data on a host of insurance crimes currently taking place.

Report says that up to 33 million licensed drivers should not be driving.

Insurer is processing claims and serving meals in storm-damaged Minnesota town.

Melbourne , Fla. — Innovative Routines International Inc. (IRI), The CoSort Company, has joined the Mainframe Migration Alliance (MMA), a group of companies working to help enterprises migrate mainframe processing to the Microsoft Platform.

A devalued greenback will keep American insurance companies looking inward when it comes to acquisitions.

Initiative seeks to make medical files easily transferable between insurance companies.

The insurer plans to release its property loss prevention engineering guidelines at no cost through its Web site.

In 2007, banks that sold insurance were more profitable than banks that didn’t.

Two new studies examine the implications of Treasury Secretary Paulson’s Plan to overhaul regulation of financial services.

Rather than react to economic pressures, insurer CIOs are urged to respond with IT strategies that drive the greatest business value.

Alliant will provide ClearPoint with the ability to bring P&C expertise to its clients from a proven industry leader, as well as an extensive national service delivery platform.

Pete McPartland, COO of QBE Regional Insurance, has left the company to pursue other interests.

Skywire’s software application is designed to streamline data capture and help automate new business underwriting.

The collaboration between the two organizations is designed to help insurers achieve process efficiency across multiple systems, processes and business channels.

The state of Iowa enacted a measure to deter stranger-originated life insurance.

Law enables carriers to use “flex band” rating.

The combination creates an integrated SOA governance automation solution designed to span all lifecycle stages and governance types from planning to development, policy and through operational governance.