Insurance

In part as an industry response to legislation passed this session mandating that insurers give consumers more information regarding insurance policies to help Florida residents better prepare for hurricanes, the Florida Insurance Council announced a Hurricane Central Web site (www.flains.org).

Austin , Texas - To improve its policy management business processes, Aflac is implementing a business process management (BPM) platform. The Columbus , Ga. , carrier, which insures more than 40 million people worldwide, said it plans to use TeamWorks software, from Austin, Texas-based Lombardi, to gain new insight into process performance through business activity monitoring.

Addison, Texas - Universal Conversion Technologies (UCT), an Addison, Texas provider of data analysis and conversion services, today announced that Cincinnati-based Great American Financial Resources, Inc. (GAFRI), a subsidiary of American Financial Group, completed its conversion project. The project included the conversion of 30,000 fixed annuity policies from a recent acquisition, to the PDMA LifePRO system, GAFRI's primary administration system for all lines of business. UCT provided consulting expertise for the data mapping and project management, as well as its data conversion architect conversion.

You've driven the winding road to ERP. You've navigated the bumpy journey to CRM. Now, it's time to rev up your engines for the next big technology race: the race to the newest enterprise goal: CPM.If you haven't already heard the term, it stands for corporate performance management-also known as enterprise performance management (EPM) or business performance management.

Network storage isn't an issue insurance executives spend much time thinking about. But it should be. For starters, regulatory demands, such as those spelled out in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), are putting the onus on executives to better manage their storage systems. To audit and archive data, organizations need to hold on to more data for longer periods of time, while keeping it all readily accessible to analytical applications.Moreover, as the industry moves away from paper documents, insurers are in danger of drowning in a sea of digital data. The buildup of data is making it more cumbersome to quickly retrieve data that's relevant to key business processes. And that, experts say, is why carriers need to properly manage network storage.

For insurers, handling claims is not only costly in terms of paying for damages, it ultimately can cost them customers: A poor claims experience will motivate angry policyholders to switch carriers.Processing paper-based claims creates bottlenecks that prevent effective communication between the affiliates in the claims value chain, a condition that inflates claims cycle time and impairs customer relations. As business leaders of claims departments huddle with their information technology counterparts, automating claims to more effectively assign, manage and close claims files has become the order of the day.

A national life settlement broker is taking an eBay-like approach to the secondary life insurance market, linking cash-strapped policyholders with institutional investors.In April, Life Settlement Insights drew a handful of institutional investors online to test the open-forward auction format of a new venture called LifeX, an electronic communications network that runs on a proprietary auction platform from HedgeHog Inc. Executives with Cleveland-based Life Settlement Insights claim they've created the life settlement industry's first online exchange and are considering extending the capability to other life settlement brokerages.

From the highest executive to the lowest-level associate, business people in corporate America are creatures of habit-often to a fault.Take paper processing. The reliance on paper documents might represent a drag on day-to-day workflow, but to business people accustomed to traditional processing methods, paper provides a comfort zone-inefficiencies and all.

When executives for MetLife Retirement & Savings were considering how to make retirement planning easier for customers to understand, Chris McCloy decided to take matters into his own hands.In late 2004, the New York-based insurer had its eye on technology developed by San Francisco-based Macro-media Inc. Using Macromedia's Breeze technology, MetLife could offer plan sponsors and their employees customizable, online multi-media presentations-supported by Flash Player and delivered in a high-impact PowerPoint presentation.

When online insurance marketplaces first appeared on the Internet horizon more than five years ago, they filled an important gap in carriers' online business strategies. At that time, most insurers had Web sites that industry experts mockingly referred to as "brochureware" to describe their informational, non-transactional qualities.Insurance marketplaces attracted the attention of consumers who were surfing the Web to comparison shop for auto, home and even life insurance. Typically frequented by young, Internet-savvy Generation Xers and baby boomers, these online insurance marketplaces provided participating carriers and independent agents with hundreds of leads from consumers who were patient enough to wade through screen after screen of questions before they received their prize: multiple quotes from brand-name insurers.

ZURICH UPDATES SURETY EXPRESSZurich North America, the Schaumburg, Ill.-based commercial property/casualty insurer, has launched Surety Express Release 2, an updated version of its free online surety bond processing system. Offering a number of key enhancements, including improved screens and time-saving features, Release 2 enables agents in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to rate, underwrite, quote, obtain and issue commercial and contract surety bonds directly from the Zurich Web site at www.zurichna.com/surety.

Avon, Conn. - The traditional business model used by carriers in the benefits arena is about to be challenged, according to Eastbridge Consulting Group Inc., a marketing advisory firm serving insurance and financial services organizations in the United States and Canada .

Hartford, Conn. - ACORD XML standards are going a long way for The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. The Hartford, Conn. carrier has harnessed the standards to provide its agents with the ability to speed up placement of midsize commercial accounts.

New York - Helping members better analyze and report their returns on standards investments, ACORD released a return on investment (ROI) analysis toolset at the 2005 ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum, held in Orlando on May 22-24.

Brookfield, Wis. - Fiserv Customer Centered Solutions (CCS), the customer relationship management (CRM) arm of Fiserv, launched its Enterprise Relationship Management Suite (ERM Suite), an integrated product line designed to address service and sales issues facing CEOs.

El Segundo, Calif. - Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) announced that five carriers in the life insurance industry have joined CSC's Next-Generation Automated Underwriting Platform Strategic Technology Program (STP). Through the program, CSC will develop a new automated underwriting software component based on Swiss Re's Life Underwriting System (LUS).

Boston - John Hancock announced a new turnkey marketing program called Key Employee Excess Enhancement Plan (KEEEP) to help producers sell deferred compensation cases and maximize sales in the business market. The program enables producers to present, sell, implement, service and administer a deferred compensation plan, including business owner and employee brochures on how the plans work and their benefits, as well as a sample client presentation. The package also contains executable documents needed to implement the plan that are ready for sign-off by the plan sponsor's legal counsel, and a producer guide offering a comprehensive program overview.

St. Paul, Minn. - Through aggressive health care fraud investigations and coordination among other states' Blue Cross plans, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota stopped payment on more than $3 million of suspect claims last year, reducing the impact of fraud on premiums in that state. By comparison, Blue Cross stopped $8.7 million in claims in 2003, most of which was due to the rent-a-patient scams now being investigated and prosecuted in Southern California."We saved millions of dollars of our members' premium dollars, because we were able to identify the scam early and stop payment on fraudulent claims," says Dave Bohnenstingel, SIU manager. "In fact, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota was integral in bringing the scam to light and the perpetrators to justice," he added.

San Francisco - InsureWorx Inc., a provider of modular software solutions to the insurance industry and the workers' compensation carrier market, has launched its new Web site, located at www.insureworx.com. The site introduces the look and feel of the newly formed InsureWorx organization which resulted from the January 2005 acquisition of Taliant Software by WorldGroup.The new InsureWorx Web site includes information about the company's PowerComp products, the company, and the insurance software market. Of particular interest to existing InsureWorx customers is the client services area. These pages are designed to become a primary source for customer information and communications/

Kirkland, Wash. - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has selected Ubmatrix, a Kirkland, Wash., supplier of software and services, to provide technical support and training in the development of an XBRL demonstration project for use with NAIC's insurance statutory financial reporting data.