ALLIANZ SELECTS RISK MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
Allianz Group has tapped Toronto's Algorithmics Inc. for a strategic insurance risk management project that will enable Allianz to calculate its risk capital across the entire group and meet its Solvency II requirements.
Munich-based Allianz, a provider of insurance, banking and asset management, says it chose Algorithmics for its expertise in portfolio replication and enterprise risk management.
"Our goal is to be able to quantify all our risk types across our entire organization and shorten our reporting time for economic capital significantly," says Tom Wilson, CRO of Allianz. "Ultimately we want to be able to use our risk measures in our business decision-making in 12 months' time. Algorithmics will provide us with a transparent and auditable way of doing this using their replicating portfolios risk management technology."
The methodology of portfolio replication enables insurers to generate a portfolio of standardized assets as a representation for their liabilities in order to calculate market risk measures on a market consistent basis, faster and more transparently than existing methods, the company claims.
PROPERTY DAMAGE ESTIMATOR
Edmeston, N.Y.-based New York Central Mutual (NYCM) selected 360Value to estimate replacement costs for commercial properties throughout the state of New York. Developed by a team from Insurance Services Office Inc. (ISO) subsidiaries Xactware and AIR Worldwide Corp, 360Value is a Web-based replacement-cost estimator that is designed to provide reliable and easy-to-calculate replacement-cost estimates for residential, commercial and agricultural properties. NYCM has been using Jersey City, N.J.-based ISO's estimation solutions since 2004.
"The need to estimate replacement costs reliably has become a high priority as we grow our commercial property portfolio," says Kathy Bell, VP for underwriting at NYCM. "Maintaining insurance to value is an important strategic initiative for our underwriting department. We've had great success working with ISO to improve the insurance to value of our residential portfolio and plan to place a special emphasis on ITV when writing commercial policies. 360Value will play a critical role in our efforts."
WESTERN & SOUTHERN UPDATES PLATFORM
Cincinnati-based Western & Southern Financial Group upgraded its core administration system from the TriZetto Group, Inc.'s ClaimFacts product to its Facets 4.51.
The Facets application implementation, including the Workflow and eXtended Integration (FXI) modules, will be conducted over the coming months. Western & Southern, a diversified financial services company that provides insurance, retirement planning and investment products and services, anticipates a transparent process.
"Members will notice not the transition, but our enhanced ability to serve them," says Clint Gibler, CIO of Western & Southern. "For instance, TriZetto's Facets system will allow us to more easily configure health benefits that specifically support Western & Southern's valued associates."
Western & Southern is the most recent TriZetto customer to upgrade from the legacy mainframe ClaimFacts application to the flagship Facets system for its functionality, business flexibility and extensible service-oriented architecture-enabled technology, the company says.
INFINITY CHOOSES SIRCON
Birmingham, Al.-based Infinity Property and Casualty Corp. has implemented the Sircon for Carriers solution from Okemos, Mich.-based Sircon Corp. Sircon for Carriers is a set of software and services that supports flexible business processes and streamlines on-boarding of new agents and subsequent compliance and management of an agent sales force.
"Infinity needed a technology solution to match and support our aggressive expansion efforts, and Sircon's solutions matched our vision for the role insurance technology should play in our organization and for our customers," says Mitch Silverman, director of corporate compliance at Infinity. "The Sircon for Carriers solution will help Infinity save thousands of man hours by eliminating paper-handling in favor of electronic processing that is faster and much more accurate, boosting the value we provide to our agents and our customers as we continue to grow."
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