Insurance

The Phoenix Companies Inc. has completed the implementation of Metaserver Inc.'s business process integration (BPI) technology that supports the Phoenix Information Gateway, which is supporting several straight-through processing initiatives for the Connecticut-based insurer.

Daniel Burrus, a leading technology forecaster and one of the New York Times' top three business "gurus will keynote the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum, to be held May 23-25, 2004, in Las Vegas, NV. Burrus has a worldwide reputation for accurately predicting the future of technological change."In times of great uncertainty, we must ask ourselves what we are certain about," says Burrus. "Changing times mean changing strategies." At the Forum he will share "Technostrategies for Creating and Sustaining Strategic Advantage" in an uncertain world.

Atlanta, GA--DWL, a provider of Enterprise Business Services Software, today announced the release of DWL Insurance for Group Life and Health 3.0, giving health insurers the market's most functionally rich set of self-service business capability for agents, customers, call center staff, internal employees and distribution networks. Built on a composite application framework, version 3.0 has more than 35 new end-to-end business services to allow group life and health companies support plan member enrollment, dependant enrollment, billing, coverage selection and provide new and enhanced claims processing functionality.

The Agents Council for Technology (ACT) has published "The Real-Time Revolution: Redefining How We Work," a report to help independent agents and brokers and carriers better use real-time technology to improve workflows, customer service and sales, and understand the broad reach technology is likely to have in the industry. ACT, affiliated with the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA), Alexandria, Va., formed a work group to study the potential of real-time transactions and to help agents and brokers and their carriers keep pace with the efficiencies provided by technology that allows the agency system to effectively compete long-term with other distribution systems.

Sun Life Financial has contracted for NaviSys Front Office(TM) illustration software. Sun Life Financial's producers will use the software to propose term, whole life, universal life and variable universal life products to their clients.

St. Louis, MO--Genelco Software Solutions, a division of Liberty Insurance Services Corporation (LIS), today announced the newly released version 3.0 of its front-office Web portal product, Genelco LifeView. Genelco LifeView 3.0 builds upon its common-sense approach to Web access with innovative improvements to function and design.

The question still remains whether a critical mass of consumers will actually purchase insurance online-not just research options and get quotes. But 21st Century Insurance Group is betting they will.Even with that belief driving its e-commerce strategy, however, the Woodland Hills, Calif.-based personal auto carrier hasn't been passively waiting for consumers to get accustomed to the idea of buying their policies online.

Who knows what the future holds? While the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is actively investigating terrorist communications and activity to prevent possible attacks, insurers are beginning to understand the necessity of taking a new, more proactive approach to assessing their own risks of loss related to people, processes, technologies or external events.These "operational risks," as defined by the Bank of Inter-national Settle-ment (BIS) in its proposed Basel II accord, are exemplified by events and failures such as Enron and WorldCom, the power outage in the Northeast last summer, the continual stream of computer viruses infesting the Internet, and, of course, the September 11 terrorist attacks.

For years, administration of workers' compensation insurance at Boston-based OneBeacon Insurance Group was viewed as an occupational hazard-a bona fide accident waiting to happen.With antiquated operating systems trying to support the effort, OneBeacon, which sells $40 million in workers' compensation coverage a year, had a difficult time furnishing transactional data for workers' comp insurance to the state rating bureaus and statistical agents in the states that it wrote workers' comp insurance.

Two General Motors Corp. subsidiaries are partnering to create new products for their joint customers.

Although nearly half of the states have passed laws allowing insurance companies to use credit-based insurance scores to assess and price risk-albeit with some restrictions-a new study reveals that the practice disproportionately harms low-income and minority policyholders."There was a tremendous demand to know what happened to low-income folks and protected classes like minorities when you use credit scoring," says Randy McConnell, communications director for the Missouri Department of Insurance (MDI), which conducted the study. "It struck people as disingenuous whenever the credit-scoring vendors were saying, 'There's no relationship between credit scoring and income.'"

As insurers hatch strategies to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), a new report suggest that they should view the law "as a catalyst for much-needed and long-delayed business transformation objectives," triggering "long-overdue investments in technology they have been putting off for years."The report, by Needham, Mass.-based TowerGroup, says that Sarbanes-Oxley should not be viewed as a burden but as an opportunity. In the report, "Technology Considerations for Sarbanes-Oxley: A Catalyst for Long Overdue IT Upgrades," Virginia Garcia, TowerGroup analyst, writes that the act "blows the cover off inherent weaknesses in hodgepodge IT architecture typically found in U.S. financial institutions today.

There's no way around it: It takes a long, long time to develop the software programs for a new underwriting and billing system. Then throw into the mix the risk of the internally built system not working properly, taking longer to implement, and perhaps even draining cash flow."I've been in the business for about 30 years," says Mark Gire, vice president of information services for Norcal Mutual Insurance Co. "I've never seen it take less than four to five years" to develop a solution internally.

Donegal Mutual Insurance Co. has reaped many benefits from its system integration efforts over the years. Executives with the Marietta, Pa.-based provider of personal, farm and commercial insurance admit that their strategy of implementing component-based technology would not be successful without a strong emphasis on systems integration.For example, Donegal's systems integration efforts helped immensely when the provider went scouting for a document imaging and workflow system in 2001.

State Farm unveiled a new financial education Web site that provides fun ways for K-12 students to learn basic principles of financial responsibility and money management. With only a handful of states requiring students to complete a personal finance course before graduating high school, the State Farm "Common Cents" online program can help parents and educators give children the real-life skills they need to become smart consumers, sensible savers and responsible investors, according to the Bloomington, Ill.-based insurance company.

Worcester, MA--Kemper Auto and Home's Syracuse office and Blue Cod Technologies, Inc. of Worcester, MA announce the signing of a contract under which Blue Cod will be responsible for providing outsourced application and technical support for Kemper's New York Assigned Risk Automobile business. Blue Cod will host Allenbrook's Phoenix policy processing solution and provide it to Kemper Auto and Home over the Internet. Blue Cod will also build and maintain a number of interfaces to various external applications.

DALLAS--Docucorp International, a leading provider of enterprise information solutions, announced today the availability of Image Resource, an affordable content management and workflow solution, for the managing general agent (MGA) market.

INDIANAPOLIS--Anthem Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Anthem Inc.'s program designed to help companies maintain an emotionally healthy workforce, has made available a new Web site that provides instant access to various online resources and interactive tools to help employees better manage their work and home lives in an effort to improve or maintain their well-being. "An organization's success is dependent upon a physically and emotionally healthy workforce," said Marty Dubin, Psy.D., vice president, Anthem EAP. "The Anthem EAP Web site is completely confidential and provides streamlined access to a wealth of content and self-service capabilities to help provide guidance when facing life's stressful challenges."

The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co. (HSB) has launched HSB InstantQuote, an online tool that provides a quick way to quote and bind equipment breakdown coverage in as little as three minutes. A two-minute animated demo of InstantQuote can be viewed at www.hsb.com.HSB InstantQuote is designed to provide new business equipment breakdown quotes for small commercial and middle-market firms with individual location values up to $10 million for manufacturing and $20 million for non-manufacturing.

SOLCORP, a subsidiary of EDS, and Universal Conversion Technologies (UCT), Addison, Texas, will jointly host a Webinar on data migration best practices . This interactive Web-based presentation, "Policy Administration System Consolidation: Overcoming the challenges of data migration" will be presented live over the Web on March 11, 2004 at 2 p.m. EST.Reduction of operating costs is a top priority for life insurance carriers, and many are investigating consolidation of back-office systems, or migration to a new policy administration platform to address this business imperative. With either of these options, however, CIOs face a data migration project that brings with it a host of challenges. In this interactive presentation, experts from SOLCORP and UCT will present a strategy for minimizing the risks and maximizing the benefits, one that's based on a realistic understanding of the degree of complexity involved in data transformation. The presentation will include a step-by-step migration playbook--from calculating return on investment on the front end to improving data quality on the back-end.