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A routine, "fit-for-purpose" data assessment helps carriers plan wisely.

LIBERTY UNVEILS COMMERCIAL PRODUCT

Thanks to new technologies, carriers are unearthing fraud such as "rent-a-patient" schemes and physician upcoding.

It's no secret that the insurance industry takes a relatively dire view of regulatory compliance. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is reported to have cost public companies across all verticals $35 billion last year. If the popular press is correct, that equates to 30,000 man-hours per company, per year, to comply. Although it's a given that promoting accurate bookkeeping (not cooked books) is simply best practice, the only companies seeming to benefit from compliance efforts are the pool of compliance-related technology solution providers.

Adding metrics to customer touch points results in agency's ability to increase first-call closes and improve overall sales.

You can't hop into a cab, step into an elevator or walk down the street without passing someone using a Blackberry, iPhone or other type of mobile device. Business professionals, students, police and even your kids are connected every second of the day. As a result, more and more carriers are recognizing the inherent value of mobile technologies as a productivity tool, and have embraced this technology.

Viewed from afar, the claims process has not changed markedly in many decades. Despite new technologies being leveraged in many aspects of claims, for too many insurers, the claims process as a whole remains a manually intensive, inefficient business process-one in which even experienced adjusters find themselves mired in paperwork.

Analytics isn't a new concept, but considering the way insurers now use it, it may as well be. Where once fraud was the issue to enter insurers' minds when they heard the term analytics, they have now found more ways to use this technology. One approach is to employ text analytics, which often uses natural language processing (NLP), a subfield of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics, to convert unstructured data into valuable, structured data.

Dayton, Ohio — Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. has been recognized for its innovative use of technology across and beyond the business to create and sustain highly significant and quantifiable business value, according to DM Review magazine and the Teradata Corp., division of NCR, a Dayton, Ohio, data warehousing and business intelligence technology provider.

In a new 68-page report entitled 'BPO Opportunities in the Property & Casualty Insurance Sector,' analyst John Willmott finds that P&C insurers perceive themselves to be in a mature and highly competitive industry where process cost reduction and continuous service improvement are viewed as far more important mechanisms for achieving improvements in competitive positioning than process innovation.

Fairfax, Va. — The National Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies (NAILBA) announced the appointment of Thomas A. Kirke to the 2008 Executive Committee. Effective Jan. 1, 2008, the NAILBA Executive Committee will be filled as follows:

Washington – An extension to the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) has passed the U.S. Senate. The measure was approved by unanimous consent. The original TRIA was passed in wake of 9/11 and is set to expire on December 31.

Tropics Software Technologies announced its new Director of Software Development, Robert Sillett. Sillett will concentrate his efforts on the new Tropics .NET platform. He has teamed up with the Tropics system designer and recruited consulting help to build a robust .NET architecture for the upcoming versions of Tropics software.

Boston – Arbella Insurance Group, a Quincy, Mass., regional provider of property and casualty insurance, hopes to celebrate a winning season with the Boston Celtics basketball team, the carrier announced.

Philadelphia — CIGNA Corp. is expanding into the small-group healthcare market with the announcement of its intention to pay $1.5 billion in cash for Great-West Healthcare, a deal that is expected to close during the first half of 2008, subject to regulatory approval. The Philadelphia-based carrier, whose CIGNA HealthCare business is based in Bloomfield, Conn., said it plans to fund the deal through cash and debt, and that it will also inject approximately $400 million of capital into its subsidiaries to support the acquired business.

Philadelphia — CIGNA Corp. is expanding into the small-group healthcare market with the announcement of its intention to pay $1.5 billion in cash for Great-West Healthcare, a deal that is expected to close during the first half of 2008, subject to regulatory approval. The Philadelphia-based carrier, whose CIGNA HealthCare business is based in Bloomfield, Conn., said it plans to fund the deal through cash and debt, and that it will also inject approximately $400 million of capital into its subsidiaries to support the acquired business.

Bala Cynwyd, Pa. - Philadelphia Insurance Companies, a writer of commercial property/casualty, personal lines and professional liability insurance products, is launching a new online policy delivery system effective December 1, 2007.

Schaumburg, Ill. - Zurich North America announced it has added 100 monoline workers' comp business classifications to its coverage offerings. Most of the new classes are for light manufacturing, wholesale and service company risks.

Los Angeles – Using the 2006 fatal crash data released by the U. S. Department of Transportation just weeks ago, Farmers Group Inc. has completed a study to determine the most influential factors in drivers’ mortality rate in multi-vehicle accidents.

Washington — Insurance industry associations are obliging to a request for comments by the U.S. Treasury Department as it conducts a review of the regulatory structure associated with financial institutions. Several associations used the opportunity to reiterate their opposition to the creation of the optional federal charter (OFC) for the insurance industry. Senators Tim Johnson, D-N.D. and John Sununu, R-N.H., introduced the National Insurance Act of 2007 into the upper house in May.