Pentelia, Flagstone Re, Aon Contract RMS' ILS Platform
Risk Management Solutions (RMS) announced three companies have picked up its insurance-linked securities (ILS) portfolio management platform. In the last quarter, Bermuda-based Pentelia Capital Management and Flagstone Reinsurance and Chicago-based Aon Benfield have signed on to use the 18-month-old Miu platform. The company recently released an updated version to include event mapping and historical catastrophic event analysis, as well as a feature to combine historical scenarios with future risks.
"We selected Miu because RMS offers a product that best suits our needs," says Mathieu Marsan, risk manager and actuary, Pentelia Capital Management. "RMS has shown strong commitment to the capital markets through the development of a purpose-built ILS portfolio management platform, which has been enhanced since we first saw it in 2009. We are happy to join the growing community of Miu users."
RMS said since the program's release, two-thirds of ILS funds that license third-party models have adopted its platform.
AACC Selects Kognitio Pricing Service
Chicago-based automotive insurer American Access Casualty Co. (AACC) implemented Chicago-based Kognitio's Data Warehousing-as-a-Service (DaaS) pricing service. The DaaS-based pricing service is designed to compare U.S. Census data, and more than 400 million historical and current auto insurance price points with a company's loss ratio data using Quomation's PowerBatch technology. Kognitio's WX2 in-memory analytic database serves as the program's foundation.
"We saw a market with significant needs and realized there was a distinct opportunity for us to become involved and assume a leadership role," says John Thompson, Kognitio's CEO of North American operations. "By combining WX2's power with the unlimited flexibility and low cost of DaaS, we have developed a service that fills a void in the automotive insurance market. American Access' management team and analytics experts quickly recognized the value and shared our vision. They have been crucial to proving that this approach is viable and provides significant value."
American Alliance Gains 4Sight
American Alliance, Rosemont, Ill., announced its decision to use 4Sight's Business Intelligence for Property and Casualty solution for its property/casualty business.
"We were immediately impressed with the system. With the what-if capabilities, ad-hoc reporting, and over 70 standard reports and dashboards," says Marc Romanz, president of American Alliance. "4Sight for P&C will help us look at our business in a number of different ways that provide monitoring as well as looking ahead at critical items."
Austin, Texas-based 4Sight says the program is user-friendly, and can be quickly implemented and user-ready in 45 days. The Intelligence for Property and Casualty suite is designed with more than 50 preconfigured reports, and supports most computer operating platforms and database programs.
CEMIC Implements ISCS Policy Admin Suite
CEM Insurance Co. (CEMIC), a Deer Park, Ill.-based property/casualty insurer specializing in niche offerings, announced installation of ISCS' Web- and SOA-based underwriting program, SurePower Innovation Policy Administration Suite.
"As our product base, agent base and written premiums continued to grow, it was clear the use of additional technology was a necessity to more efficiently process our current business and assist with controlled growth moving forward," says Christopher DuCharme, director of program operations for CEMIC. "The most important benefits [of the SurePower implementation] to CEMIC were the efficiencies the system provided, the additional data and reporting features, and the ability to equip our agents with cutting-edge technology to remain competitive within our environment."
ISCS' SurePower Innovation, created to serve commercial, personal and specialty lines of business, is designed to automate underwriting, manage policy and claims, allow for integrated reinsurance and billing, and provide document management, rules-based data warehousing, and document imaging. The companies said the program's implementation met the projected eight-month goal.
ServiceLogix & FirstBest Partner, Beacon Benefits
Beacon Mutual, a Warwick, R.I.-based workers' compensation provider, opted to use software created through a partnership between Denver-based ServiceLogix and Burlington, Mass.-based FirstBest Systems Inc. The program Beacon has slated to implement combines ServiceLogix's insurance applications for policy administration, StoneRiver Power Suite, with FirstBest's Underwriting Management System, a program used in conjunction with its Agent Portal program.
"The FirstBest partnership is a natural extension of our commitment to providing best-in-class insurance applications. With FirstBest's underwriting workstation and agency portal, which provide carriers with best-practice functionality in tandem with flexible and configurable platforms, carriers now have better capabilities to improve underwriting quality and productivity," says James Thomson, president and CEO, ServiceLogix. "FirstBest has a growing customer roster of the most innovative workers' compensation carriers. Our partnership will help us implement more robust solutions for workers' compensation, a line of business that has become increasingly competitive."
The program will be integrated with Beacon's BeaConnect site in order to provide straight-through-processing (STP) quoting and real-time interaction with its 400 independent agents.
MEM Adopts Thunderhead Software
Columbia, Mo.-based workers' compensation insurer Missouri Employers Mutual (MEM) announced it will use the Thunderhead NOW customer communications management system. The program is designed to simplify the process of making changes to data, allowing members of an organization who aren't technologically minded to alter content without relying on an IT department.
"We needed a document-creation tool to integrate with our policy and billing systems," says Cassandra McGinnis, MEM's director of application development and support. "We chose Thunderhead because of its open standards-based architecture, scalability and potential to give more control of document changes to the business. We believe these features will improve MEM's flexibility and speed-to-market-all of which will benefit our agents and policyholders."
Irvine, Calif.-based Thunderhead's XML-based NOW program is designed to speed time to market, reduce costs and lessen the demand on IT resources.
Bankers Fidelity Life to Manage Distributor Channel with Sircon
Sircon, a Vertafore business, announced that Atlanta-based Bankers Fidelity Life Insurance implemented the Sircon for Carriers solution to help manage its growing network of agencies and producers. Sircon for Carriers is a comprehensive suite of tools designed to manage compliance and the entire producer lifecycle, providing connections to carriers, agencies, agents, education providers and state regulators.
"Bankers Fidelity Life is rapidly growing our agent population and we did not have the systems or the level of resources available to handle the initial onboarding or the ongoing agent maintenance at a much higher level. We were looking for a way to improve efficiencies of our existing staff and increase the speed at which we activate these new agents," says Bob Hines, agency VP of Bankers Fidelity Life Insurance Co. "Sircon will streamline our processes and allow us to add and maintain all the new agents, while also providing the ability to deliver direct online access to activation services, minimization of paperwork, virtual elimination of processing delays and positioning the company to take full advantage of the automation opportunities now available within the insurance industry."
The Sircon for Carriers suite integrates product modules that streamline and automate three main functions: licensing and appointing, producer compliance management, and agent on-boarding-all designed to help manage the producer lifecycle.
FBM Idaho Opts for Guidewire
Pocatello, Idaho-based Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company of Idaho has selected two products from San Mateo, Calif.-based Guidewire Software.
FBM Idaho chose PolicyCenter as its new policy administration and underwriting solution and Guidewire BillingCenter as its new billing system. The new applications will replace functionality currently performed by the carrier's legacy all-in-one policy, billing, and claims system. FBM Idaho had previously selected Guidewire ClaimCenter.
"It was important for us to find the right solutions for our business," says Tim Stronks, VP, Personal Lines at FBM Idaho. "Our preference was that these be from the same vendor so that we could best leverage our internal IT skills across systems. Guidewire offered individually strong applications with the added benefit of a common architectural foundation, which met our needs nicely."
Blue Cross Adopts Colibrium Suite
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City has integrated the Tuo Underwriting system, a Colibrium Partners LLC program. Atlanta-based Colibrium partners says Blue Cross' launch of the program is part of a marketing and underwriting automation strategy to leverage Tuo and Microsoft Dynamics.
Tuo is designed to provide real-time approval, paperless processing, integration into an existing systems, and to allow for changes to underwriting methods quickly without costly development efforts, Colibrium says.
IAT Selects Valen Analytics Solution
Raleigh, N.C.-based IAT Insurance Group, a multi-line insurance group consisting of eight companies and gross premiums written in excess of $600 million, has selected Valen Technologies Inc.'s UnderRight predictive analytics underwriting solution, which is designed to improve pricing strategies, risk selection and profitability.
IAT chose UnderRight due to the its predictive modeling, availability of expansive external data through Valen's Xdata data warehouse, historical underwriting and claims data through the ValenNetworks consortium data warehouse, as well as Valen's pre-built model delivery solution, the company says.
