POLICY PROCESSINGThe Cumberland Insurance Group, a Bridgeton, N.J., multi-line carrier, has placed Mount Arlington, N.J.-based AGO Insurance Software Inc.'s Commercial Multi-Peril Policy System in its production environment. The Windows program will be used to streamline the policy cycle process for CMI.
LIFE/ANNUITY MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
North Quincy, Mass.-based Aviva Life Insurance Co.'s life insurance and annuities policies run on VANTAGE-ONE and LIFE/70 administration software applications from El Segundo, Calif.-based Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) and will continue through 2008. Under the three-year extension agreement, CSC will provide comprehensive management and production support for these systems, which will aim to enable Aviva to continue to simplify information technology maintenance and quickly launch new products.
SYNDICATED LIFE FORMS
Springfield-based Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. contracted with Exton, Pa.-based Internet Pipeline Inc. (iPipeline) to syndicate life forms directly onto their distribution partners' Web sites. IPipeline's content repository is designed to make it quicker and easier for life brokerage agencies to offer their producers access to the forms necessary to write new business.
SECURING PERSONAL INFORMATION
In an effort to comply with regulatory mandates, American National Insurance Co., Galveston, Texas, selected PGP Universal from Palo Alto, Calif.-based PGP Corp., to secure electronic communications containing personal and confidential information. The latest version of PGP Universal features centralized key management and policy enforcement, internationalization for different character sets and encodings, German and Japanese language and localization, and centralized management of PGP Desktop clients.
POLICY ADMIN, LIFECYCLE SUPPORT
QuickSolver, a policy administration solution from INSTEC Corp., Naperville, Ill., is in full production at Cheshire, Conn.-based Housing Authority Insurance Group (HAI Group). Existing data was imported in real time during the rating process, and QuickSolver policy data was exported to HAI Group's data warehouse for data mining. QuickSolver is designed to provide a policy administration solution including bureau-compliant rating for all 50 states, full policy issuance capabilities and full policy lifecycle transaction support. QuickSolver is installed in a remote data center that is managed by MFX, a subsidiary of Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., both based in Toronto.
CLAIMS MANAGEMENT TPA
Specialty Risk Services Inc. (SRS), a Hartford, Conn., property/casualty third-party administrator for workers' compensation and general liability claims, reached a new claims administration agreement and partnership with New York-based Arch Insurance Group Inc., provider of property/casualty and specialty insurance for corporations, professional firms and financial institutions throughout the United States and Canada. Under the terms of the agreement, Arch will use SRS' claims management experience to service property/casualty insurance programs-workers' compensation, automobile, general and product liability, integrated disability, claims administration and risk management services-underwritten by Arch.
DATA LOSS PREVENTION SOFTWARE
American National Insurance Co., Galveston, Texas, is using Vontu Prevent software from San Francisco-based Vontu Inc., to stop the loss of confidential information, including policyholder data and other privacy-related information. Vontu Prevent is designed to proactively prevent data loss by integrating with e-mail message chain and Web infrastructure technologies, block communications containing confidential content and route messages to an encryption gateway for secure delivery, enabling enforcement of enterprisewide encryption and archiving policies. At American National, Vontu Prevent analyzes e-mail traffic and routes messages containing confidential content to PGP Universal from PGP Corp., Palo Alto, Calif., for encryption and secure message delivery.
FRONT OFFICE AUTOMATION
Conseco Services LLC, Carmel, Ind., licensed Edison, N.J.-based NaviSys Inc.'s NaviSys Front Office for application entry, underwriting, case management and new business workflow. Conseco will capture, manage and issue new business for specified disease products and support task management for Medicare supplemental products. Conseco also has the option to use the solution for life insurance and annuities. This project will streamline key processes, including assigning and managing cases, evaluating applications, ordering and interpreting requirements, and automating decisioning where possible.
WORKERS' COMP POLICY AND CLAIMS SYSTEM
After a two-month set up and configuration, Umialik Insurance Co., a multiple line, property/casualty insurance company headquartered in Anchorage, Alaska, went live with a workers' compensation policy and claims systems from Tropics Software Technologies, Sarasota, Fla. Tropics installed the software and configured it to Umialik's specifications before going on site. Umialik predicts the increased productivity they've experienced, especially in report writing, will reduce the need for new staff in policy and accounting.
ENTERPRISEWIDE STORAGE PLATFORM
QualChoice of Arkansas, a health insurance provider based in Little Rock, has chosen Cognos 8 BI, from Ottawa, Ont.-based Cognos Inc., as the platform to build an enterprisewide data warehouse to hold all information relating to medical claims, provider contracts, financials, and business operations. With Cognos 8 BI, QualChoice of Arkansas plans to replace numerous and siloed Excel spreadsheets and SQL queries with one single product designed to provide an accurate, consolidated view of the company's performance.
ELECTRONIC BILLING SYSTEM
The FCCI Insurance Group (FCCI), a commercial property/casualty insurance provider based in Sarasota, Fla., will replace its current billing systems with Renaissance e-billing, a Web-enabled, scalable and object-oriented insurance billing and accounts receivable system from New York-based Systems Task Group International Ltd. Renaissance e-billing aims to centralize and streamline FCCI's billing and accounting operations by consolidating more than 15,000 policyholder transactions from multiple distributed applications. FCCI hopes to reduce costs, increase productivity and enhance administration management, while improving customer service.
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
AIG Edison Life Insurance, a Tokyo-based division of American International Group Inc., providers of insurance and financial services, selected Bellevue, Wash.-based Onyx Software Corp. to support AIG's ongoing customer relationship management strategy and business growth. AIG Edison Life is leveraging the Onyx Migration program to replace a previous implementation that AIG reports is costly to maintain.
POLICY ADMIN PORTAL
Under a new license agreement between Unify Corp., a Sacramento, Calif.-based provider of business automation solutions, and City County Insurances Services (CIS), Salem, Ore., CIS upgraded to the new release of Unify's NavRisk, extended its software license for another three-year term, and will implement the newly-released NavRisk Policy Administration Portal. CIS uses NavRisk to automate processes, increase operational efficiencies and ensure data integrity in their policy administration and underwriting services. By extending its use of NavRisk, CIS plans to track and manage all member, contact, policy, coverage and exposure information and issue policy documents, certificates, endorsements and all levels of invoices.
CLAIMS ANALYSIS SYSTEM
Heartland Health, St. Joseph, Mo., selected Urix Analytic Platform from Cheshire, Conn.-based Urix LLC for Heartland Health's Community Health Plan. The system is designed to supply employer-group accounts with automatically produced executive summary reports, supplemented by an intuitive, drill-down tool for Web-based analysis of claims data. Community Health Plan will use the Urix Analytic Platform for financial, actuarial, medical and employer-group reporting.
MAINFRAME-TO-SOA SUITE
The Western Reserve Group, a Wooster, Ohio-based provider of insurance services, installed soaSolution, a patent-pending mainframe-to-service-oriented architecture (SOA) suite from OpenConnect Systems Inc., Dallas. The soaSolution suite is designed to transform business process knowledge used throughout the extended enterprise into secure and complete mainframe services to help organizations comprehend, configure and securely connect to mainframe assets through SOA platforms. It comprises three components designed to improve return on legacy investment while eliminating the risk of migrating mainframe information and applications to SOAs.
REAL-TIME RENEWAL, ENDORSEMENTS
Louisiana Workers' Compensation Corp. (LWCC), Baton Rouge, has installed the AgencyPortal renewal and endorsement component from Boston-based AgencyPort Insurance Services to selected pilot agencies. This will enable LWCC's agents and underwriters to migrate to automated Web-based renewal and endorsement processing in real-time. The module is also expected to enable LWCC to provide electronic notification of a renewal to the agent 60 days in advance via LWCC's agent portal, renew the policy-or process an endorsement request-automatically from the agent in real-time mode, distribute PDF images of the policy or renewal quote to agents up to 60 days in advance of the renewal date, and improve agent efficiency and underwriter responsiveness by allowing a secure online access to renewals and endorsements.
STREAMLINING P&C CLAIMS PROCESSING
Utica National Insurance Co., New Hartford, N.Y., is using ProcessClaims Inc., a Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based provider of software connectivity and business process solutions for the P&C claims industry, to streamline claims prossessing and provide vendor integration for all lines of auto material damage coverage. By migrating Utica's claims management process onto an automated configurable platform, Utica now has the ability to centralize data, communicate with vendors and streamline the process. The company reports that the enhancements have positively affected cycle time and should enable Utica to manage and report on many aspects of a claim.
DATA ACCESS THROUGH WEB-ENABLED DEVICES
Amica Mutual Insurance Co., a national writer of automobile, homeowners, life, marine and personal excess liability insurance headquartered in Lincoln, R.I., selected the Intelligent Application Gateway solution from Fort Lee, N.J.-based Whale Communications Ltd., to provide its employees access to applications and network resources from any Web-enabled device. Amica wanted to continue to maximize its employees' ability to service customers through secure and convenient anytime access to key corporate data and information. Amica is providing access to a variety of applications and network resources including its corporate Intranet, Microsoft's Outlook Web Access, Native Outlook, file shares and Terminal Services. Whale's technology integrates SSL VPN, endpoint security and application security components on a single appliance.
