Insurance

Having suffered five of the top ten deadliest natural disasters in history, with recent events affecting over 70 percent of its land area and more than half its population, China presents ongoing challenges to the insurance market. According to a new market report released by Aon Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary of Aon Corp., these and other challenges are complex and amplified by the scale of the market and the speed of its development.

A.M. Best's recent catastrophe-related loss estimates reveal a bad first nine months of 2011 for U.S. P&C insurers. According to the agency's briefing “U.S. Property/Casualty Catastrophe Losses Climb to $38.6 Billion for the First Nine Months of 2011,” the estimated total net pretax accident-year catastrophe-related losses were $38.6 billion, up $22.5 billion (140 percent), from an estimated $16.1 billion reported during the same period a year ago.

Aspen U.S. Insurance has entered the recreational marine insurance market, with a focus on marinas, yacht clubs, boat dealers, boat manufacturers and boat component manufacturers.

Micro Focus, a provider of enterprise application modernization testing and management solutions, released Micro Focus Server Enterprise Edition for PL/I. The edition is the first complete, cross-platform migration solution that enables mainframe PL/I applications to be moved, with minimal changes, from an IBM mainframe to Linux, Unix or Windows Server platforms, where they can be operated for a fraction of the cost.

CGI Federal Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Canada-based CGI Group, announced that it has been awarded a $93.7 million contract by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) to build the U.S. government’s federal health insurance exchange.

Property/casualty insurers may well be relieved that the 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season officially ended this week. This year, the season counted 19 tropical storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes (Category 3 or above on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) resulting in insurance claims.

Mobile devices and network capabilities will lead growth areas in IT and information management in 2012, with cloud services adoption and enablement not far behind, according to IDC’s annual market predictions.

AXIS Capital Holdings Ltd.’s insurance segment named John Van Decker EVP and head of North American professional lines.

With a bearish market persisting, IT is expected to deliver miracles without the luxury of economic hardship as an excuse.

FirstBest Systems Inc., a provider of insurance software solutions for insurance carriers, has upgraded its FirstBest Front Office Suite’s underwriting workstation, agent portal and upload applications. The applications now enable account-based underwriting for multi-line insurers and mono-line insurers selling multiple policies for a single risk.

A survey of 120 U.S. P&C insurers finds them increasingly leveraging social media platforms for business purposes. Conducted by IVANS, an electronic communications services provider, the study notes that return on investment for social media initiatives can be difficult to measure and says that carriers must work with their distribution partners to ensure a cohesive strategy.

Today's high national unemployment rate is misleading and irrelevant. The insurance industry is being drained of talent and experience—a trend that's going to impact the industry and its customers for years to come—and could soon be short-staffed.

Despite the hype around new areas like mobile, social media, and cloud, the story of insurer IT budgets and projects for 2012 is one of continuity. Insurers are investing, through replacements and enhancements, in delivering the business capabilities needed to support growth, achieve competitive parity and improve operational effectiveness. But most insurers still think of IT as a self-contained area. And few have truly integrated it into operational planning in the way that companies will need to as the broad changes in information technology sweeping through the economy start to drive change in the basic assumptions of the insurance industry.

If you had to pick an industry to go paperless, insurance might seem an unlikely choice. Core processes for insurers typically are paper-intensive. What's more, as a whole, the industry has been somewhat slow to adopt new processes and technologies.

Insurers are always on the lookout for ways to spot fraud, and with good reason. The instances of fraud, and the variety of fraudulent activities, continue to rise.

1. Risk Management/ Climate Control

If IT spend is any indication of insurers' intentions, consider the planned major strategic projects such as core system replacements or enhancements proof that modernization is a continuous process.

Life insurers need to craft mitigation strategies for a prolonged low-rate environment.

Of all the trends set to impact the insurance industry in 2012, the wide use of business analytics across the enterprise was likely the easiest to foresee.

Daily, there's news affecting health insurers. What's becoming clear is that transparency is a demand from consumers and regulators that health insurers are going to have to keep up with.