Who's Buying What: Recent deals for technology software and services

COLONIAL SELECTS IWORKSColonial Life & Accident Insurance Co., Columbia, S.C., selected iWORKS NAVIGATOR, a life insurance and annuity illustration system from SunGard Data Systems Inc., Wayne, Pa. SunGard's iWORKS NAVIGATOR Illustrations is an integrated, Web-based or desktop solution designed to enhance the sales process and incorporates functionality for life insurance and annuity illustrations and quotes.

Colonial will use iWORKS NAVIGATOR to illustrate its universal life products. iWORKS NAVIGATOR will be added to the company's business workflow, integrating with two existing systems: the new business and policy issue systems. Colonial will issue policies after generating the illustration and use SunGard's co-designer authoring tools to help develop and modify products. The co-designer tools will assist Colonial with cloning existing products, making rate changes, changing product input screens and modifying presentations.

GUY CARPENTER ADDS LOCATION INTELLIGENCE

Pitney Bowes MapInfo, Troy, N.Y., a global provider of location intelligence, integrated its location intelligence technology into i-aXs, an online risk management platform developed by New York-based Guy Carpenter & Co. LLC, a risk and reinsurance specialist. With the added component of location intelligence, i-aXs is designed to enable insurers to analyze and visualize their portfolio exposures and losses at a granular level, helping them make more informed reinsurance purchase decisions.

Guy Carpenter already leveraged McLean, Va.-based MicroStrategy Inc.'s business intelligence technology within its i-aXs platform and sought a way to more efficiently analyze and report data from a location perspective. It integrated the Pitney Bowes MapInfo location intelligence component with its MicroStrategy business intelligence platform and, as a result, ceding insurance companies can use location intelligence while concurrently accessing a range of enterprise reporting and analytic solutions.

PITNEY BOWES MAPINFO ALSO ENABLES

i-aXs to utilize the output of standard catastrophe model applications, says the company. Users are able to seamlessly generate maps of a catastrophe exposure based on reports as well as create reports based on maps.

EBIX SIGNS THREE CONTRACTS

Atlanta-based Ebix Inc., an international developer and supplier of software and e-commerce solutions to the insurance industry, has signed contracts with three insurers to license and deploy back-end insurance company systems.

Ebix's Infinity carrier system division signed contracts with Princeton, N.J.-based Princeton Insurance Co., Houston-based HCC Insurance Holdings Inc. and Uniondale, N.Y.-based Wright Risk Management, to license and implement its Infinity brand of carrier systems to these companies.

The three contracts have a cumulative value ranging between $12 million to $18 million, based on the amount of professional services work that is billed to the three insurance companies.

MICHIGAN BASIC PICKS INSURITY SOFTWARE

Michigan Basic Property Insurance Association, Detroit, selected Alpharetta, Ga.-based ChoicePoint Asset Co.'s Insurity to provide policy administration, claims and reporting services. Michigan Basic will implement Insurity's Policy Decisions, Claims Decisions and Reporting Decisions software to manage its homeowners, residential fire, crime and commercial property business.

According to Kay Robinson, manager of information systems and support for Michigan Basic, a new service vendor needed to meet several key criteria: their technology had to run on the Microsoft .NET platform, use XML and be fully Web-enabled.

Michigan Basic was impressed with Claims Decisions' workflow and messaging, Robinson says. "It's a tight, all-inclusive package that will give us straight-through processing and consistent handling from start to finish. Policy Decisions was equally impressive, boosting our efficiency from agency submission to built-in underwriting rules."

ASPEN RE GOES LIVE WITH CUSTOMIZED RMS PLATFORM

Bermuda-based Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd. launched a custom-developed risk management platform to identify the concentration of exposures across its reinsurance and insurance portfolios. RiskClash was developed for Aspen by Risk Management Solutions Inc., a Newark, Calif.-based provider of products and services for the quantification and management of catastrophe risks. The solution is designed to model single-site risk accumulation across combined insurance and reinsurance lines down to a city block, subject to data being available.

The advantage of the RiskClash system, the company says, is its ability to determine Aspen's aggregated exposure across its entire risk portfolio, and identify post loss potential exposure in key geographical locations with a high level of accuracy. In addition, the system will allow Aspen to run "what if" scenarios using any country and peril.

NATIONAL INDEMNITY SELECTS FISERV SOLUTION

Fiserv Insurance Solutions Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, announced that Omaha, Neb.-based National Indemnity Co., the largest member of the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. group of insurance companies, has licensed the Web-based Fiserv Advanced Billing solution for property/casualty insurers. Written in Java, Fiserv Advanced Billing is designed to increase operational flexibility while driving down cost of operations.

Fiserv Advanced Billing supports personal and commercial lines in any combination and electronic viewing and payment capabilities for policyholders. Based on open service-oriented architecture principles, the Web-based system is platform-flexible, and provides online, real-time processing for carriers of all sizes.

"With the Fiserv solution, National Indemnity will achieve its goals for supporting direct billing with greater efficiency, and enhancing the customer experience with the convenience of electronic billing and payment," says Gary Sherne, president of P&C systems solutions for Fiserv Insurance. "Electronic billing and payment will reduce the expense of traditional printing and mailing, and give customers fast, reliable, secure access to premium invoices."

UNIFI COS. CHOOSES POINT-OF-SALE SOLUTION

Insurance Technologies LLC, Colorado Springs, Colo., a provider of illustration and point-of-sale software, announced that Lincoln, Neb.-based UNIFI Cos., an annuity provider, has selected ForeSight to enhance functionality and overall user experience of their annuity sales and marketing technology.

ForeSight manages all point-of-sale activities from a single platform, and is being utilized by UNIFI to integrate asset allocation models, provide product-training wizards, offer sales strategies and concepts, generate storyboards, provide opportunities to integrate electronic applications and clearly present differentiating product features and benefits.

According to Insurance Technologies, ForeSight Mobility helps new field producers, or those with limited annuity exposure, provide clients with focused product information. The ForeSight platform is designed to help producers educate clients and compel positive action, which will develop a producer's business. ForeSight Mobility also assists producers with creating actuarial onscreen quick views with monthly and yearly values, and provides templates for creation of reporting sales kits.

PROGRESSIVE EXTENDS MITCHELL'S CONTRACT

San Diego-based Mitchell International Inc., a provider of performance management solutions to the automotive insurance claims and collision repair industries, announced Progressive Casualty Insurance Co., Mayfield Village, Ohio, has agreed to a multi-year contract extension with Mitchell for auto physical damage claims estimating solutions.

Mitchell's estimating solution organizes and routes all essential claims data while simplifying the collection and flow of critical documents and tasks within and between business partners. Mitchell's estimating database of parts and labor times creates complete and accurate estimates that reduce cycle times for repairs and improve customer satisfaction, according to the company.

CELINA SELECTS IPARTNERS INSURANCE SCORECARD

Property/casualty carrier Celina Insurance Group, Celina, Ohio, has implemented Alpharetta, Ga.-based iPartners LLC's Insurance Scorecard, a software-as-a service business intelligence system.

The application automatically loads data from Celina's policy and claims systems, securely stores the data, and presents it graphically, incorporating key performance indicators of immediate past performance and trends. Information can be displayed in more than 100 ways, and is accessible to authorized users via a Web browser.

Celina Vice President Duane Kimball says the iPartners solution gives Celina managers the ability to find potential problem areas before they cost the company money, and to see opportunities, such as the value of expanding a particular marketing effort.

"Some people are comfortable analyzing numbers, but others do better with a visual picture," Kimball says. "The iPartners Insurance Scorecard provides a good cross-section of both."

GENERAL CASUALTY LICENSES AQS/ADVANTAGE

AQS Inc., Hartland, Wis., a provider of commercial policy administration solutions for P&C insurers, announced a licensing agreement with General Casualty Insurance Cos., an auto, home and business insurer based in Sun Prairie, Wis. AQS will provide General Casualty with its AQS/advantage solution, a comprehensive commercial lines policy administration system, as well as AQS/advantage Integrator, a back-end administrative tool used to monitor the ETL process, providing the client success/failure notifications to their target back-end systems.

General Casualty chose the AQS/advantage system after a thorough evaluation. The systems' ability to address integration requirements with other General Casualty systems and its "production-ready" implementation convinced company officials to license the AQS system.

"Through the use of Web services, XML and .NET technologies, the AQS/advantage solution is technically compatible with our environment," says Peter Logothetis, General Casualty's senior vice president and chief intelligence officer - QBE Regional Insurance. "It met our criteria for architecture and flexibility, and it allows integration with current and future customer-facing systems."

SIX COMPANIES PURCHASE IMAGERIGHT SYSTEM

Six new insurance organizations signed contracts with ImageRight, Conyers, Ga., a provider of insurance-focused data imaging, content management and workflow solutions.

The organizations represent a range of companies, including property/casualty carriers, agencies, medical malpractice insurers and brokers.

"Agencies, brokerages and carriers alike are handling more data than ever before," says Don Elias, president of ImageRight. "Dealing with such an influx of paperwork and information on a daily basis demands the functionality a system such as ImageRight can provide to handle data imaging, content management and workflow faster and more efficiently."

Companies that recently purchased the ImageRight system include: Fargo, N.D.-based Concorde General Agency, Los Angeles-based Sullivan Group, Houston-based HCC Insurance Holdings Inc., Charleston, W.Va.-based West Virginia Mutual Insurance Co., Fort Lee, N.J.-based LIG Management Services Inc. and Newport Beach, Calif.-based Sterling Casualty Insurance Co.

AMERICAN SAFETY LICENSES LAWSON SYSTEM

Bermuda-based American Safety Insurance Services Inc. (ASI) licensed the latest Lawson S3 Enterprise Financial Management Suite and Lawson System Foundation 9 technology platform from Lawson Software, St. Paul, Minn., to help expedite and streamline its reporting processes. With the new system, the insurer expects to reduce its financial closing period from 10 to six days, a 40% improvement. American Safety Insurance (ASI) signed the contract in Lawson's fourth quarter of fiscal 2004.

The new system will replace ASI's legacy financial system, which required manually intensive and inefficient paper-based processes. With the Lawson S3 Enterprise Financial Management Suite, ASI will have tools to simplify regulatory compliance via enhanced reporting.

For example, ASI expects the system to help create automated workflows to streamline key financial processes, such as budgeting and forecasting. The new system is designed to eliminate duplicate data entry.

ASI plans to implement and run the new system on an IBM System i platform.

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