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CIO stress, a Big Data mess and cloud trustworthiness: Five predictions for IT in 2012 and the years beyond.

Two groups focused on reigning in costs have established a primary care physician practice in North Carolina. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) and UNC Health Care announced Carolina Advanced Health to eligible BCBSNC customers last month.

A day after the Insurance Information Institute released figures declaring 2011 the costliest year for P&C insurers covering U.S. cat losses, Munich Re and I.I.I. announced global cat figures.

Allstate is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to claims service.

On Thursday, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. filed a lawsuit against J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and four other financial firms claiming that $200 million in residential mortgage-backed securities it purchased through the firms were now "junk."

Looking to round out its core system offerings, Cover-All Technologies Inc. has acquired BlueWave Technology for an undisclosed amount of cash.

Predicting the future can be a fool's game, but planning for it is an operational necessity for insurers.

Spurred by its $16.2 billion acquisition of American Life Insurance Co., MetLife Inc. moved into the top five while American International Group Inc. (AIG) slid from third to fifth in A.M. Best’s rankings of the top 25 global insurers based on nonbanking assets. UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint Inc., at third and eighth, respectively, were the only U.S.-based insurers to rank in the top ten based on net premiums written.

While expectations are not dwindling in the face of these challenges, respondents also complained that they are being given fewer resources to accomplish performance goals. According to a Towers Watson report, the bulk of 48 claims officers from small, medium and large insurers believe they have the authority to make a difference, but not necessarily "the range and depth of resources" to do so. To sidestep this detrimental trend, technology-in the form of electronic communications and processes-is being looked to as a bridge for the gap left by dwindling resources.

Online Insurance Marketplace, an online community for educated consumers to shop and access quotes for insurance plans from various companies, has taken its social media efforts to a new level, promoting life insurance on its Facebook page by offering a simple poll question.

The United States set a record in 2011 in its declarations of federal disasters, and insurers are still playing catch-up with claims payouts. In fact, when all is said and done, insurers will have paid more than $32 billion in claims to help people rebuild homes and businesses damaged or destroyed by natural disasters in 2011, according to the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.).

The ACE Group, an insurance and reinsurance company, has acquired Rio Guayas Compania de Seguros y Reaseguros, a general insurance company in Ecuador owned by Banco de Guayaquil, for about $55 million in cash.

Try as I might, some article assignments just don't elicit a very fevered response in me when first assigned (I'm looking at you, standards). This is never the case when it comes time to write about claims.

State Auto Financial Corp. (STFC), a P&C insurance holding company, says the proposed changes to the intercompany reinsurance pooling agreement for the State Auto Group received all necessary regulatory approvals from various departments of insurance. The pooling changes were made effective as of Dec. 31, 2011, and include changing the overall participation of the STFC Pooled Companies and the SAM Pooled Companies to 65 percent and 35 percent, respectively, from their current 80 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

Without previous levels of investment return, the industry's IT stance remained conservative.

A Swampscott, Mass., man was convicted in a Salem Superior Court this week of bilking insurers out of $30K for claims fraud. Owner of two auto repair shops, Robert Giller, 53, plead guilty to 40 counts of fraud, which included 20 counts of filing false insurance claims, 18 counts of felony larceny and two counts of attempted larceny.

The top technologies in use today by P&C insurers today are portal technology, business process management and fraud scoring, according to a new report from Celent. The new study outlines all technologies being used by insurers and lays out their adoption rates.

Cheaper, more powerful tools and a new breed of specialists will help insurers better understand their customers and markets in the year ahead.

One week after new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that the number of children with insurance increased by 1.2 million since President Obama signed the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act in 2009, more than $296 million was awarded to states for ensuring more children have health coverage.

QBE Insurance Group will acquire Optima Insurance Group, an underwriting group in Puerto Rico that posted an estimated $100 million in gross written premium in 2011.