Insurance

Hartland, Wis. - AQS Inc., a Hartland, Wis., policy administration software provider, announced an agreement with the American Association of Insurance Services (AAIS) to provide its forms, rules and rating information in AQS' commercial policy administration systems for farm and inland marine to AQS clients that are AAIS members. Wheaton, Ill.-based AAIS, which acts as a product development resource for insurance providers, offers expertise in product development, actuarial analysis, and regulatory filings. The relationship between AAIS and AQS' Bureau Unit expands bureau-related information available to AQS clients and fosters straight-through processing by providing clients access to the information electronically.

Mississauga and Toronto, Ont. - Chubb Insurance of Canada, a subsidiary of the Warren, N.J.-based property and casualty company Chubb, has implemented MS/B's IntegriClaim property claim estimating technology as a desktop application into Chubb's property claims management process. Chubb Insurance of Canada, located in Toronto, will use the Los Angeles-based company's technology to help facilitate its continued development in the Canadian market.IntegriClaim is a suite of property claims solutions for the P&C industry. It is designed to deliver more consistent and accurate estimates reflective of localized costs by using total component data researched from nearly 100 unique cost locations in Canada.

Greensboro, N.C. - DataDelta Inc. has launched its first "Single Customer View Accuracy Survey" in partnership with market research firm The CDI Institute. Burlingame, Calif. The purpose of the survey is to measure single customer view accuracy that results from customer data integration (CDI) projects.The initial survey results will be presented at the 17th Information Quality Conference hosted by Larry English and The International Association for Information and Data Quality (IAIDQ) September 19-23 in Houston, Texas.

Los Angeles - While most believe insurance is important to protect assets and, in the case of life insurance, their families, Los Angeles-area Latino consumers in general under-utilize insurance, according to a study released today by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) at the University of Southern California.The study, made possible by a grant from Allstate Insurance Co., Northbrook, Ill., used focus groups and a telephone survey to assess Los Angeles-area Latino resident's attitudes toward three types of insurance: auto, property (homeowners and renters) and life. The study also examined how these consumers make decisions about insurance purchases and gather information about insurance. Among the key findings:

Oak Ridge, Tenn. - Diversified Product Inspections Inc., a provider of independent product failure analysis, air contamination and fire investigations for the insurance industry will now send its clients product failure analysis reports electronically via a secure PDF file format.Warren Wankelman, vice president of marketing says, "Effective Monday, August 8, 2005, DPI started transmitting reports, pictures, and invoices electronically, which will replace the reports being sent via U.S. Mail. These reports will be in a secure encrypted Acrobat Reader format with access only with a password. Subrogation managers, claims managers and adjusters will access this new system via the DPI Web site by registering and setting up an account. While adjusters will only be able to access or view their own claims, managers will be able to view all their company's reports that have been completed."

Phoenix - AlohaCare, a non-profit Hawaii health plan serving state QUEST members, has selected an enterprise application and professional services application from Quality Care Solutions Inc. (QCSI) to administer claims and accommodate future growth. QUEST is a state program that provides health insurance for more than 150,000 Hawaii residents, provides comprehensive medical care for those who cannot afford their own commercial insurance coverage and do not qualify for other programs.AlohaCare has been successfully running its claims administration using QCSI's product suite since August 2000, and was previously under contract with a third-party vendor for support and hosting services. AlohaCare recently upgraded to a more current version of QCSI software, in order to achieve its desired business outcomes and maximize its information technology investment.

Denver--Qwest Communications International Inc. has won a new multimillion-dollar agreement from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, Eagan, Minn., for high-end data networking services. The contract, worth approximately $3 million over three years, enables Blue Cross to set up a redundant network to support the company in the event of a disaster or an outage on its primary network.Qwest will provide metro optical Ethernet services of bandwidth up to 100 Mbps, and 20 private routed networks between Blue Cross's offices and a state-of-the-art Qwest CyberCenter. Also, Blue Cross will install dedicated iQ Networking ports at three sites using bandwidth up to OC-192.

San Jose, Calif.--one of Switzerland's largest health insurance organizations for private and corporate customers, Christian & Social Health and Accident Insurance (CSS), has deployed more than 1,900 Linux-based thin-client devices at its headquarters in Lucerne and regional branch offices. This deployment of devices from Wyse Technology, replaces a previous solution at CSS from a competing thin-client vendor.The Linux-based thin-client solutions provide CSS with an adaptable alternative to the standard PC that is inherently resistant from viruses, and helps CSS' distributed organization to save a significant amount of time, money and IT management resources, according to Wyse Technology.

Northbrook, Ill. - Allstate Insurance Company has engaged ProcessClaims, Manhattan Beach, Calif., to develop and test new claim-related quality assurance technology. The software is being designed to streamline quality assurance processes and ensure accuracy in vehicle estimate preparation. The companies are also exploring broader new technology approaches to drive e-business in the rapidly evolving collision repair inter-industry. ProcessClaims is a provider of software connectivity and business process automation for the property and casualty industry.

New York-As the next step in its efforts to automate the sales and processing of life insurance policies, The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has launched its pilot program for InsurExpress, New York. Leveraging DTCC's infrastructure and established network of connectivity, InsurExpress integrates key insurance industry service providers to support communications between insurance companies and participating distributors of insurance products, providing necessary functionality for life insurance application processing.Firms participating in the initial pilot testing include Genworth Financial, Richmond, Va., and Piper Jaffray, Minneapolis. In the coming months, DTCC intends to expand the program to include multiple financial advisors in various geographical locations, together with an expanded product set and carrier list.

Washington, D.C. - There is a clear economic case for structural changes in insurance regulation, namely an optional federal charter (OFC), that could benefit both consumers and life insurers, according to a study conducted by the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), Washington, D.C., and Computer Sciences Corporation, El Segundo, Calif.

Northbrook, Ill.--Allstate Life Insurance Co., a subsidiary of The Allstate Corp., is participating in the PREPARE (PREVU* Predicts Atherosclerosis Risk and Events) clinical trial, a study with Toronto-based IMI International Medical Innovations Inc. and McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Guelph, Ont. The study evaluates a new medical technology for assessing the risk of coronary artery disease.Currently, Allstate Life customers who apply for a life insurance policy must undergo a blood test as one of a number of factors to assess their coronary artery disease risk. The new study incorporates a skin test that uses an adhesive collection strip that is applied to a study participant's hand. Upon removal of the strip, dead skin cells are collected and then sealed in a collection device and processed using IMI's patented PREVU* LT Skin Sterol Test system.

In a perfect world, maintaining IT assets would entail faultless consistency: reliable hardware, software and support services, a trusted team in place that would optimize integration and functionality through each asset's lifecycle, and the chairman of the board's slap on the back for bringing IT spending in-once again-under budget.Dennis Callahan, CIO of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, knows that there is no such thing as a "perfect world." He might even go so far as to say that the only consistent thing in life is change. Callahan just wants to make sure that Guardian Life's IT asset management initiative represents positive change for the 145 year-old New York-based mutual life insurance company.

The decision to send IT operations overseas is often viewed in the pejorative by IT line personnel, who feel they must continuously "skill up" or face the unemployment line. Though carriers are often reluctant to publicize their strategies, sources indicate it's definitely a topic of executives' conversation.IT offshore outsourcing, i.e., offshoring, has intensified, and from a business driver perspective, its discussion is becoming more commonplace in the boardroom, where it holds less controversy.

Customer service can be performed and measured in many ways. In this month's cover story, the nuances of customer relationship management-performance monitoring and analysis-play a big role in insurer's success. Being able to provide high levels of service with each and every customer contact-whether in person, on the phone or online-is sure to drive revenue and retention.How your company manages customer service may be the result of definable metrics, such as demographic studies, formal assumptions about customer behavior, anticipation of future requirements, etc. It may also involve a bit of guesswork. The results of your measurement should prove unequivocally that you know your customer.

Do the numbers 705/4 mean anything to you? What about the name Ronald Katz? If not, you may want to pay more attention to what's happening in the patent world.The numbers 705/4 represent the U.S. Patent Office classification for insurance inventions. And, according to industry sources, carriers are woefully oblivious to the spike in patents filed under that classification over the past few years.

A survey conducted by AIIM, a Silver Spring, Md., enterprise content management (ECM) association, reveals that while cost reduction is still dominant in driving ECM decisions, compliance and payback are growing in popularity.AIIM surveyed more than 1,200 end users and potential end users of content and document management technologies in nine countries: the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Germany, Australia, and the Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg).

We all remember the horror stories about customer relationship management projects gone awry: XYZ Insurance Co. spent $5 million in 2000 on a CRM engagement, and another $2 million on software, only to find out a year into implementation that the big idea wasn't working. XYZ's call center performance measurements-such as average wait time, average call handling time, and abandon rate-were below industry benchmarking standards-if they were measured adequately at all.Now, five years later, these same insurers have sophisticated performance management systems in place that tell them exactly how long it takes for their service representatives to resolve a customer's problem, how long a caller waits in a queue, and how much money the company can save by improving these key performance indicators.

Computers are supposed to shorten or take over routine tasks for us, freeing human brains and hands for creative projects beyond the capabilities of machinery. Frequently, however, users find themselves at the mercy of their mainframes, desktops and laptops, performing repetitive input chores and time-consuming database maintenance functions. Now, a technology that takes advantage of automated Internet resources is allowing carriers to skip the middlemen and take the data directly where it needs to go - the agent and the consumer - without costly delays.Being able to use this type of technology to streamline the release of new products and reduce the time it takes to announce changes in a product's pricing structure is a growing need faced by most carriers. Such was the concern of Electric Insurance Company (EIC), a Beverly, Mass., carrier whose roots date to 1966 when it provided insurance for employees of General Electric. Today EIC, licensed in all 50 states, has expanded its P&C direct-to-customer rates to the general public.

In the late 1990s, when insurance firms were running high loss ratios (from 110 to 130), Lombard Canada Ltd., one of the oldest property and casualty insurance operations in Ontario, hired a consulting firm to assess its underwriting and claims leakage while it sought to improve IT and drive down expenses.With the firm's help, Lombard's loss ratio started dropping. While other Canadian firms were still grappling with hefty loss ratios, Lombard moved on to major technological decisions.