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When online insurance marketplaces first appeared on the Internet horizon more than five years ago, they filled an important gap in carriers' online business strategies. At that time, most insurers had Web sites that industry experts mockingly referred to as "brochureware" to describe their informational, non-transactional qualities.Insurance marketplaces attracted the attention of consumers who were surfing the Web to comparison shop for auto, home and even life insurance. Typically frequented by young, Internet-savvy Generation Xers and baby boomers, these online insurance marketplaces provided participating carriers and independent agents with hundreds of leads from consumers who were patient enough to wade through screen after screen of questions before they received their prize: multiple quotes from brand-name insurers.

ZURICH UPDATES SURETY EXPRESSZurich North America, the Schaumburg, Ill.-based commercial property/casualty insurer, has launched Surety Express Release 2, an updated version of its free online surety bond processing system. Offering a number of key enhancements, including improved screens and time-saving features, Release 2 enables agents in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to rate, underwrite, quote, obtain and issue commercial and contract surety bonds directly from the Zurich Web site at www.zurichna.com/surety.

What are the most important IT considerations for complying with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002? By July 15, all U.S. companies under $75 million in annual revenue must demonstrate they know the answer to that question, because that's the deadline for complying with Section 404.However, due to the lack of specific directives and knowledge, many companies are struggling with how to reach compliance by that date-let alone wondering how they will afford continued compliance year after year.

Avon, Conn. - The traditional business model used by carriers in the benefits arena is about to be challenged, according to Eastbridge Consulting Group Inc., a marketing advisory firm serving insurance and financial services organizations in the United States and Canada .

Hartford, Conn. - ACORD XML standards are going a long way for The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. The Hartford, Conn. carrier has harnessed the standards to provide its agents with the ability to speed up placement of midsize commercial accounts.

New York - Helping members better analyze and report their returns on standards investments, ACORD released a return on investment (ROI) analysis toolset at the 2005 ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum, held in Orlando on May 22-24.

Andover, Mass. - State National Companies, Fort Worth, Texas, has chosen CGI Group Inc., an independent information technology and business process services company, to provide full regulatory and statistical reporting services for their property and casualty book of business. Privately held, State National Companies includes three affiliates: State National Insurance Company, National Specialty Insurance Company and Texas-based State and County Mutual Fire Insurance Company.

Brookfield, Wis. - Fiserv Customer Centered Solutions (CCS), the customer relationship management (CRM) arm of Fiserv, launched its Enterprise Relationship Management Suite (ERM Suite), an integrated product line designed to address service and sales issues facing CEOs.

El Segundo, Calif. - Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) announced that five carriers in the life insurance industry have joined CSC's Next-Generation Automated Underwriting Platform Strategic Technology Program (STP). Through the program, CSC will develop a new automated underwriting software component based on Swiss Re's Life Underwriting System (LUS).

Boston - John Hancock announced a new turnkey marketing program called Key Employee Excess Enhancement Plan (KEEEP) to help producers sell deferred compensation cases and maximize sales in the business market. The program enables producers to present, sell, implement, service and administer a deferred compensation plan, including business owner and employee brochures on how the plans work and their benefits, as well as a sample client presentation. The package also contains executable documents needed to implement the plan that are ready for sign-off by the plan sponsor's legal counsel, and a producer guide offering a comprehensive program overview.

St. Paul, Minn. - Through aggressive health care fraud investigations and coordination among other states' Blue Cross plans, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota stopped payment on more than $3 million of suspect claims last year, reducing the impact of fraud on premiums in that state. By comparison, Blue Cross stopped $8.7 million in claims in 2003, most of which was due to the rent-a-patient scams now being investigated and prosecuted in Southern California."We saved millions of dollars of our members' premium dollars, because we were able to identify the scam early and stop payment on fraudulent claims," says Dave Bohnenstingel, SIU manager. "In fact, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota was integral in bringing the scam to light and the perpetrators to justice," he added.

San Francisco - InsureWorx Inc., a provider of modular software solutions to the insurance industry and the workers' compensation carrier market, has launched its new Web site, located at www.insureworx.com. The site introduces the look and feel of the newly formed InsureWorx organization which resulted from the January 2005 acquisition of Taliant Software by WorldGroup.The new InsureWorx Web site includes information about the company's PowerComp products, the company, and the insurance software market. Of particular interest to existing InsureWorx customers is the client services area. These pages are designed to become a primary source for customer information and communications/

Kansas City, Mo. - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) met last week to discuss steps to amend disclosure requirements for insurers that utilize reinsurance with limited risk transfer features, also known as finite reinsurance.

Kirkland, Wash. - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has selected Ubmatrix, a Kirkland, Wash., supplier of software and services, to provide technical support and training in the development of an XBRL demonstration project for use with NAIC's insurance statutory financial reporting data.

Hartford, Conn. - Aetna has entered into an agreement to acquire ActiveHealth Management, a New York-based health management and health care data analytics company. Aetna will acquire privately held ActiveHealth for approximately $400 million and expects to finance the transaction from available cash. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and federal Hart-Scott-Rodino anti-trust regulatory approval. Aetna expects to close the transaction during the [second] quarter of 2005 and that it will become accretive to earnings within 12 months following the closing. Aetna places strong emphasis on medical management," says John W. Rowe, M.D., Aetna chairman and CEO, "and ActiveHealth's ability to provide practical, timely, clinical decision support to physicians and members can improve patient safety and medical quality and reduce medical costs." Aetna has been a customer of ActiveHealth since 2002, and has private-labeled the CareEngine-powered services it uses under the name MedQuery. Other health plans also have placed the services they purchase from ActiveHealth under private labels.Source: Aetna

Cleveland - The Compliance Consortium, an international membership organization formed in June 2004 to promote effective governance, risk and compliance management (GRC), has published its operational approach for managing GRC requirements within the enterprise. Applicable to both public and private companies, the framework is designed to assist senior management and boards of directors in setting objectives for managing a wide range of compliance-related activities and instituting the programs needed to attain those objectives. This initial version is a "public draft" and is intended to invite constructive criticism and ultimately to build a broad consensus within the hundreds of companies that have registered as part of The Compliance Consortium community over the past year. Leveraging the guidelines set forth by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Consortium has defined seven operational concerns to serve as a framework for organizing and managing GRC operations. These range from clearly assigning responsibilities at all levels of the organization to establishing incentives and discipline to promote compliance The Consortium has developed a list of 12 questions that board members and senior management should ask to help ensure organizations are on track with their GRC objectives."Unquestionably, the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has increased the focus for public companies on the areas of corporate governance, risk management and compliance," says Ted Frank, chairman of the Compliance Consortium advisory committee and president of Axentis. "It's important to remember that, for many companies, Sarbanes-Oxley is just one of hundreds of mandates from the SEC, FDA and other regulatory bodies that they must manage. Our goal with the creation of this framework is to help all organizations define, execute and ultimately profit from low risk and efficient governance, risk and compliance management, regardless of the specific regulation or statute."

Sarasota, Fla.- Kirk A. Sexton will take the reins as chief information officer of Unisource Administrators Inc., a workers' compensation third-party administrator that provides workers' compensation products, claim management, managed care and payroll services, to more than 15,000 employers in the southeastern United States.

Kansas City, Mo. - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) is taking steps to amend disclosure requirements for insurers that use reinsurance with limited risk transfer features, also known as finite reinsurance. The use of so-called finite reinsurance has received considerable attention over the past several months, because of its misuse by some high-profile insurers. State insurance regulators, working in a coordinated fashion through the NAIC, have been evaluating existing relevant statutory financial reporting since last fall. The latest proposed disclosures would require an insurer to report to state insurance regulators any agreement that has the effect of altering policyholders' surplus by more than 3%, or representing more than 3% of premium or losses. The new disclosure is also designed to identify any reinsurance contract that has been accounted for differently under statutory accounting principles compared to general financial statement purposes. Additional reporting requirements regarding contract terms and management's intention in entering the contract have been included to improve transparency. The provisions include that there are no separate agreements between the insurer and the reinsurer that could serve to modify the actual or potential losses under the contract, and that the insurer complies with all requirements of NAIC's statement of statutory accounting principle (SSAP) No. 62, "Property and Casualty Reinsurance."Source: NAIC

Peoria, Ill.- RLI, a property and casualty carrier and provider of surety bonds to niche or underserved markets, established a strategic information services department to manage and develop RLI's strategic and management information services. The newly formed department's goal will be to create accurate and consistent information that can be efficiently delivered to RLI managers and executives to enable them to react to potential problems and opportunities.The new business unit "will be essential in managing our growth and achieving greater profitability," says RLI President & COO Michael J. Stone.

Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. Novato, Calif., has taken a third major step in its total IT transformation by awarding IBM a ten-year $94 million contract to modernize a major portion of the property/casualty insurer's application, development and maintenance software into an On Demand infrastructure that could reduce the number of major applications by 70 percent while improving customer service. When completed, the work could save Fireman's Fund $200 million, more than double the project's actual cost.With IBM's assistance, Fireman's Fund will shift its IT operations to an Internet-based computing model known as a "service-oriented architecture" (SOA) that enables consolidation of costly, redundant applications. Under Fireman's Fund direction, IBM will sift through mission-critical applications using a unique IBM Business Consulting process called Component Business Modeling to determine which applications deliver the most value to the business and which processes can be refined, consolidated or eliminated.