ON-DEMAND CALL CENTER SERVICEAgents OnDemand is a service designed for three key industry vertical segments-travel, healthcare and financial services-by Working Solutions Inc., a Plano, Texas-based provider of remote agent call center services to Fortune 1000 companies. According to Working Solutions, Agents OnDemand enables contact centers to respond to fluctuating call volumes by leveraging knowledgeable agents when needed.
NASD RULES E-LEARNING COURSE
Ireland-based Research and Markets has added an E-Learning course, called "NASD Rules on Variable Annuity and Variable Insurance Prospecting and Sales" to its line of courses. The course provides a summary of the current rules on prospecting for financial services and products sales. In addition, the course provides an overview of the four segments of a sales presentation, mandatory disclosure regulations, and the NASD code of conduct rules for providing a sales presentation. The course also covers NASD rules on Section 1035 exchanges, supervisory topics and use of the Internet by representatives.
NATURAL CATASTROPHE SERVICE
Developed by Boston-based AIR Worldwide Corp. (AIR), a subsidiary of ISO Properties Inc., Jersey City, N.J., the Natural Catastrophe Service provides risk profiles on every address in the continental United States. Insurers access the information online via ISO Passport-an electronic delivery system that enables insurers access to underwriting tools from ISO and other information providers through a single interface. Based on detailed data from AIR, Natural Catastrophe Service provides address-specific risk information for hurricanes, earthquakes and severe thunderstorms. The service is designed to provide the long-term average annual loss, as well as 100- and 250-year losses for a typical property at a specific location for each peril.
ENHANCED NETWORK MANAGEMENT
AlterPoint Inc., Austin, Texas, has enhanced its network change and configuration management software. Version 4.0 of DeviceAuthority was developed to address the growing concern with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and NSA security guidelines. DeviceAuthority 4.0 now has hardened application security, expanded external security system integration, granular activity logging for monitoring and reporting, device lifecycle tracking for end-of-life/end-of-service to improve vulnerability assessment and vendor support contract renewal and user action auditing.
INTEGRATED NETWORK MANAGEMENT
GoRemote Internet Communications Inc., Milpitas, Calif., is offering Enhanced Management Services, designed to provide medium to large enterprises with an integrated solution to centrally manage configuration of multiple network devices, to implement audit regulatory compliance standards and to generate reports. Features include centralized software library and automated change capabilities for software image, audit and reporting of network device compliance for HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, ITIL and other standards and regulations.
AUTOMATED LOG MANAGEMENT
LogLogic Inc., San Jose, Calif., has joined the EMC Smarts Technology Alliances Program from Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC Corp. to offer customers the ability to access 100% of log data from virtually any device or application via EMC Smarts Technology. With EMC Smarts, LogLogic customers can gain access to a real-time business management solution that enables them to see how infrastructure problems affect services and customers and what they need to fix to keep business services up and running. By automating log data and reporting, LogLogic is designed to enable customers to adapt to the complex compliance requirements regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and BASEL II.
FORENSIC ACCOUNTING TOOL
To help financial services, auditing, legal and regulatory professionals obtain accurate financial pictures of the corporations they are evaluating, Rockville, Md.-based Center for Financial Research and Analysis (CFRA) developed the Industry Risk Assessment Profile (IRAP) Library, a forensic accounting tool. The tool consists of up-to-date accounting risk assessments that identify critical accounting issues for 62 discrete industries ranging from food products to pharmaceuticals to wireless telecommunications services. In addition to highlighting industry "red flags," the IRAPs are designed to help financial professionals find tell-tale data in financial statements and to explain how such issues can affect the quality and sustainability of reported results.
E-MAIL ARCHIVING AND MONITORING
A new archiving and monitoring service from Apptix ASA, Herndon, Va., provides small- and medium-sized businesses a solution to meet the compliance demands for e-mail recordkeeping. Offered through a partnership with Vancouver-based Global Relay Communications Inc., the solution is designed to archive and monitor e-mail and attachments in real-time and includes online search and recovery capabilities, customized rules for detecting keyword and phrase violations within messages, and visible message audit trails for compliance logging. The combined messaging services of Apptix's hosted Exchange environment and Global Relay's mirrored data centers provide backup redundancy for business continuity.
UPDATED FAX SOFTWARE
Zetafax network fax server software from U.K.-based Equisys plc enables employees to send and receive faxes from their desktop and laptop PCs. The new release, Zetafax 2006 is enhanced to help IT managers meet increasing board-level demands for IT departments to support compliance efforts. For instance, all faxes sent and received with Zetafax 2006 can be stored electronically for archive and retrieval. Sensitive and confidential documents can be kept private by faxing directly from PC to PC, and fax audit trails can be maintained. Zetafax 2006 also includes a junk fax filter, providing an effective way of dealing with increasing amounts of fax spam.
SUNGARD REBRANDS
SunGard Data Systems Inc., Wayne, Pa., has combined its insurance products under a single global brand, SunGard iWORKS. SunGard's focus is to enhance its abilities to meet the growing requirements of SunGard customers around the world, from front office tools and policy administration to back office reinsurance, actuarial calculations, financial accounting, investment accounting and reporting.
According to Clare Porter, head of global marketing at SunGard iWORKS, iWORKS represents a coordinated strategy across all of SunGard's insurance products to increase value for all customers. "This unified approach is designed to help strengthen and increase awareness, in each of our major business lines, including life/annuities/pensions, property and casualty, and reinsurance."
The products included in the newly formed offering have been tailored or re-engineered specifically to the insurance marketplace.
- Amarta-Life and Annuities/Pensions Policy Administration
- COMPASS-Group Insurance, Pension and Investment Product Administration
- EAS-Financial Accounting and Reporting
- EPS-Investment Accounting and Reporting
- FrontTier-Property & Casualty Policy Administration
- NAVIGATOR-Insurance Sales and Marketing
- ProCede-Reinsurance Management
- Prophet-Actuarial Calculations
Porter, confirmed that all the newly packaged iWORKS products have the ability to lay over existing systems, and together, the products have the ability to enable straight-through processing. The iWORKS family of products leverage SunGard's homegrown common services architecture, which uses SOA as its foundation. This will allow the various iWORKS software products to "talk" to each other and to other systems.
POLICY ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM
Portal Access from Decision Research Corp., Honolulu, is designed to provide agents and other distribution channels real-time access to insurers' policy administration systems. Portal Access features include browser-based data collection, integration with policy administration systems, user-specific access to policies and quotations and the ability to create supporting document: declaration page, proof of insurance cards and quotations.
WORKERS' COMP CLAIMS REPORTING
Crawford Integrated Services, an Atlanta-based new business unit from Crawford & Co., also based in Atlanta, was developed to solve issues facing the workers' compensation industry: increasing workers' compensation loss costs; quality of care concerns; lack of consistency; and return-to-workplace productivity. The foundation of Crawford Integrated Services is a service-delivery model designed to standardize the workers' compensation claims-reporting process and deliver comprehensive, consistent and goal-oriented solutions.
WINTER STORM RISK MANAGEMENT
The Winter Storm Model from Boston-based AIR Worldwide Corp. (AIR), captures the effects of wind, precipitation and freezing temperatures on insured properties. It is designed to provide insurers with a scientifically based assessment of winter storm risk for more effective risk management. AIR's model explicitly accounts for the three drivers of winter storm loss: wind, precipitation and temperature. The AIR model is based on numerical weather prediction, a technology that naturally captures the connection between these storm characteristics by dynamically modeling the physics of the atmosphere. AIR's Winter Storm Model for the United States is available in Version 7.5 of its CLASIC/2, CATRADER and CATStation catastrophe modeling systems, as well as for service-based catastrophe risk analyses.
INTERNET-BASED FAX SERVICE
In an effort to enable businesses to manage fax communication and corresponding document management workflow more efficiently and at a lower cost than traditional fax servers or fax machines, Ottawa-based Protus IP Solutions Inc. developed MyFax. MyFax is an Internet fax service that uses existing e-mail accounts or the Web to send, receive, store or forward faxes securely without fax machines, dedicated lines, long-distance phone charges or fax modems. The service is designed to enable subscribers to access their fax communications from anywhere, at any time, the same way they access their e-mail.
NETWORK CONTENT MONITORING APPLIANCES
Reconnex, an enterprise risk discovery and management provider based in Mountain View, Calif., has released a new version of its iGuard content-monitoring appliances. The new release responds to enterprise customer requests by enabling role-based user and group accounts. Multiple users can access the system with restricted controls both into the functions of the system as well as the data, based on their role in the enterprise. The new release also features a redesigned graphical user interface with in-depth dashboard reporting and text highlighting, providing users both macro-level trend analysis as well as a micro-level view of all security incidents.
