Who's Buying What

CONTRACTOR MANAGEMENTBlue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, a Jacksonville-based health plan provider, has selected Beeline.com Inc. to automate and streamline the company's IT contractor staffing processes. Jacksonville Beach, Fla.-based Beeline automates the life cycle of contractor engagements, including job order creation and distribution, screening, supplier management, time capture, invoicing and reporting.

UNDERWRITING SYSTEM

New Day Underwriting Managers LLC, a Bordentown, N.J.-based insurance broker's resource for environmental and construction-related professional liability risks, has implemented the Velocity System from Westlake Village, Calif.-based VRC Insurance Systems to provide its partner brokers and their clients with a seamless and paperless underwriting experience. Velocity provides operational support for New Day Underwriting's sales and marketing activities, customer and policy servicing, regulatory reporting and back-office accounting functions.

GROUP ENROLLMENT, BILLING

Omaha-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska (BCBSNE) is expanding its relationship with Mount Pleasant, S.C.-based Benefitfocus.com Inc. to include small group electronic enrollment, a sales automation suite and e-billing. BCBSNE believes these enhancements will place it ahead of the curve by streamlining its enrollment and billing processes.

CLAIMS MANAGEMENT

Citizens Management Inc. (CMI), a Howell, Mich.-based workers' compensation third-party administrator and a wholly owned subsidiary of Citizens Insurance Co. of America, has chosen iVOS from San Ramon, Calif.-based Valley Oak Systems Inc. as its claims management solution. In addition to helping CMI to more effectively integrate workers' compensation, disability claims and medical bill review, the browser-based platform is designed to further enhance the way CMI receives, transmits and shares critical information with clients and vendors.

INTEGRATED COMMERCIAL P&C ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM

Hallmark Financial Services Inc., Fort Worth, Texas, which engages primarily in the sale of property and casualty insurance products, signed a licensing agreement for PREMIA from 3i Infotech Ltd., Edison, N.J., provider of information technology solutions. PREMIA will be deployed to manage the commercial business that is currently underwritten by Hallmark in six states. Hallmark hopes to achieve improved efficiency with PREMIA's functionality that includes automated workflow, imaging and agent integration.

POINT-OF-SALE PLATFORM

San Francisco-based California State Automobile Association (CSAA) has expanded production use of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Steel Card's Apogee platform to include CSAA's six-month lower cost, preferred personal auto product. CSAA is also implementing comparative rating to ensure that consumers are advised of the lowest cost option available. This new product represents the 10th line of CSAA business now in production on the Steel Card Apogee platform. CSAA has been using Steel Card's Apogee point-of-sale solution for sales representatives and Internet quoting solution for consumers. With the addition of Apogee's comparative rating functionality, CSAA can provide both policyholders and sales reps more options to determine the best fit of coverage.

LONG-TERM CARE PRODUCT, SERVICE OUTSOURCING

Allstate Financial Services LLC, Northbrook, Ill., will seek long-term care products and services from The BISYS Group Inc., a New York-based provider of outsourcing solutions for the financial services sector. The relationship will provide Allstate's national agency sales force of approximately 13,600 exclusive agents and financial professionals with the ability to provide customers with long-term care products that complement Allstate's existing portfolio of life insurance and investment-savings products.

RETIREMENT SALES SYSTEM

The National Life Insurance Co., Montpelier, Vt., chose the Retirement Road Map sales system from Charlotte, N.C.-based Impact Technologies Group Inc. to provide its national field representatives with a retirement planning solution that specifically targets baby boomers. National Life will also be purchasing Impact's Web-based financial sales and collaboration platform, PlanLab, which automates the financial sales process across an enterprise, from initial fact finding to financial plan generation.

SALES COMPENSATION AUTOMATION SYSTEM

The Regence Group, a Portland, Ore.-based affiliation of health care plans in the Pacific Northwest/Intermountain region, has selected Centive Compel from Incentive Systems Inc., Burlington, Mass., to automate the sales compensation processes for The Regence Group salespeople in Idaho, Utah, Oregon and Washington. Compel will automate a manual spreadsheet process The Regence Group found to be time-consuming and labor-intensive. The Regence Group also expects to enhance audit capabilities and be able to integrate Compel with its existing back-end data warehouse.

MOBILE CLAIMS SCHEDULING

Toronto-based RBC Insurance Services Inc., an operating division of the Royal Bank of Canada, has chosen SERVICEPower software from U.K.-based ServicePower Technologies plc to provide scheduling and optimization tools for managing RBC Insurance's team of mobile adjusters. SERVICEPower will initially be implemented within the home and auto division of RBC Insurance and will be used to improve management's visibility into the service process and allow them to manage their adjusters' time more effectively.

DOCUMENT TRANSFORMATION

The Hanover Insurance Group, Worcester, Mass., selected Whitehill Technologies Inc., a provider of document composition and data transformation software headquartered in Moncton, New Brunswick, to improve its ability to communicate more effectively with their agents. After establishing a companywide agency portal, The Hanover used Whitehill TransformAFP to convert policy documents and agent reports from AFP to PDF format, then used Whitehill xml-Transport to distribute those documents to the agency portal.

UNDERWRITING POLICY PROCESSING INTEGRATION

College Station, Texas-based Insurance Information Exchange (iiX), a member of the ISO Properties Inc., Jersey City, N.J., and provider of insurance underwriting information, will integrate its credit, claims and motor vehicle reports (MVRs) on the policy-processing platform from IBQ Systems, Spokane, Wash. Insurers and their agents can now access iiX's underwriting information, including A-PLUS property and auto claims history reports, MVRs and credit scoring from IBQ Systems.

HEALTH CARE CLAIMS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Aon Consulting Inc., a Chicago-based risk management and group benefit consulting firm, selected Urix Analytic Platform (UAP) from Cheshire, Conn.-based Urix LLC to help Aon clients better understand their health care claims data and take corrective actions. UAP combines three key components for addressing the business intelligence needs of plan sponsors: USTART for mapping, cleansing and normalizing claims data from diverse sources; eCLARE for ad hoc online claims analysis; and PRESS for customized employer group report publishing on the fly.

REAL-TIME UPLOADING FOR AGENCY MANAGEMENT

Harleysville Group Inc., Harleysville, Pa., is using TEAM-UP Upload, an interface bridging solution developed by Houston-based Connective Technologies Inc., to enable its independent insurance agents to work in real time directly from their agency management systems to rate, quote, bind and issue a policy in a matter of minutes. With TEAM-UP Upload, duplicate data entry is no longer necessary. All ACORD standards are fully supported, and workflow processing provides transactional integrity regardless of the source system. Error handling is also built in for various types of transactions encountered during the upload process.

AUTOMATIC STATE FILING

Minnetonka, Minn.-based employee benefits provider KMG America Corp, and its wholly owned subsidiary, Kanawha Insurance Co., Lancaster, N.C., will be the first customer to implement InSystems Writer 1.1 from InSystems Corp., Markham, Ont. Using one master document, InSystems Writer automatically produces state-specific documents for filing with state insurance regulators. Users can create state-, product- and line-of-business-specific documents for filing at the touch of a button, without having to re-engineer the process for creating product wordings.

IDENTIFY THEFT RESTORATION

In an effort to address the growing concern of identity theft, New York-based Atlantic Mutual Insurance Co., through an agreement with Chicago-based provider of identity theft restoration services RelyData LLC, will offer free identity theft restoration services to its Atlantic Master Plan policyholders with home coverage. Atlantic was impressed that RelyData is recommended by the credit reporting industry, promising to resolve any recurrences up to a year after the initial incident. When a policyholder reports an identity theft loss, Atlantic Mutual will set him or her up to work directly with RelyData at no cost.

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