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HARTFORD, Conn.--The paper application for Builders Risk coverage has gone the way of the thatched roof, replaced by electronic application submission, rating, quoting and binding from The

COLUMBUS, Ohio--Grange Insurance is introducing a new extranet Web site for its independent insurance agents featuring technology to streamline business processes. The site also offers comprehensive functionality that helps agents manage the sales process and their Grange policies. The new Web site, http://www.grangeagent.com , is being rolled out to Grange's 1,200 independent agencies.

PALO ALTO, CALIF--Corporate America's information architecture is replete with obsolete, redundant and unused software applications--so many, in fact, that maintaining them drains tens of billions of dollars per year from the most information-intensive companies alone. However, nearly three quarters of these companies have no process in place for retiring outmoded software and less than half conduct regular software audits to see how much software is on the network.

BOCA RATON--The LexisNexis RiskWise Rate Evasion Evaluation service helps insurance providers prevent application and premium fraud using sophisticated models powered by public records data.

ALPHARETTA, Ga.--ChoicePoint today announced its acquisition of Priority Data Systems, based in Omaha, Neb., a provider of comparative rating software solutions to the independent insurance agency market. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Along with "dot-com," another linguistic relic of the late 1990s is "CRM." The acronym is barely uttered anymore in polite business circles--at least not without knowing, sideways glances. That's because the promise of both the Internet and customer relationship management were notoriously inflated during the last few years of the 20th Century, and many companies that bet too much on those promises lost millions."From the late 1990s through about 2001, there was this tremendous expectation that CRM in conjunction with the Web was going to solve everybody's problems," says Tom Congoran, vice president of health care at Pegasystems Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based business process management (BPM) software firm.

The insurance industry was in shock after N.Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer dropped his bomb by filing a lawsuit in October against Marsh & McLennan. Spitzer charged the New York-based insurance brokerage firm-one of the largest in the country-with receiving payoffs from carriers for steering commercial business their way, rigging fake bids, and cheating corporate customers out of receiving advice in their best interest.Marsh and others in the industry have since suspended contingent commissions-the questionable payment structure at the heart of Spitzer's case. But no one can say for certain how broker compensation will change as a result of the investigations, which now include other brokerage firms and commercial and health carriers.

When insurance underwriting cycles turn sour, as they inevitably do, industry experts are quick to criticize the industry for not following strict underwriting guidelines. The easiest solution for insurers to turn a "soft" market around is to raise premium rates, but some carriers, such as Fireman's Fund Insurance Co., are revamping their underwriting systems to improve underwriting consistency and discipline.As part of a broad initiative that includes reorganizing its field force of independent agents and developing an enterprisewide approach to IT systems to support a cohesive distribution strategy, the Novato, Calif.-based carrier will implement the Accenture Underwriting Components Solution. The Web-based platform uses diagnostics and rules-based technology to help improve underwriting efficiencies.

Many insurers would agree that financial services convergence-the integration of bank, brokerage and insurance products sold under one roof-has not matured to the degree many had hoped four years after the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.The new director of distribution for The Hartford Financial Services Group's life insurance business, however, believes there is a great deal of untapped opportunity ahead-particularly relating to an insurer's ability to market products at the bank level. The key to the effort: make it as simple as possible for bank representatives to push insurance products out to their customers.

Each year, insurers identify the flexible, non-proprietary and enterprisewide benefits of Web services, although insurers continue to cite three prevailing reasons to table e-services investments for another day. These reasons include reliance on multiple legacy system operating environments, security issues and overall costs.In a survey of 132 property/casualty insurers conducted in October, Troy, N.Y.-based MapInfo Inc., a global provider of location-based geo-spatial software solutions, determined that there's been increased adoption of Web services and integration technology. The survey was largely targeted to IT managers and senior-level executives.

The Contracts Update section includes announcements of contracts insurance information technology companies have signed with customers in recent weeks. Contract news can be faxed to Insurance Networking News magazine at (312) 913-1366 or by electronic mail to Stephen.Dwyer thomsonmedia.com Accenture

The Chubb Group of Cos. is making processing E&O insurance coverage easier for agents with an intuitive, customized Web-based solution that's proving to be a smart investment.Providers of errors and omissions (E&O) insurance coverage market the product knowing that corporations are eternally liable for their mistakes and oversights.

Until recently, grid computing was the domain of high-performance computing sites that calculate petabytes of data for particle physics problems or modeled engineering simulations. Now, grid computing is going mainstream, opening up new possibilities for carriers looking to support their growing application portfolios while keeping a lid on information technology budgets.By distributing processing workloads across networks of already existing computers, companies can attain higher performance processing power for relatively little additional investment.

Carriers that provide coverage for rare, valuable items understand that it's ill-advised to assign appraisers who specialize in fine art or jewelry to assess the valuation of an expensive item outside their realm of expertise.Selecting the wrong appraiser can result in an inaccurate assessment-one that not only negatively impacts an insurer's risk exposure, but also can affect the price a policyholder pays for coverage.

As insurers "Web-enable" their core applications to provide agents, claims professionals, customer service representatives and customers access to data and transactional functions, poor Web site performance becomes more than an annoyance to end users. It becomes a critical component to a company's success.A London-based firm that operates a hub for cedants, brokers and reinsurers to collaborate, share data and transact business online realized the importance of this issue when London users of its Singapore-hosted data management center (DMC) application reported slow page refreshes and data downloads.

Cedar Rapids--Fiserv Insurance Solutions, a unit of Fiserv, Inc. and an innovative solutions provider for the insurance industry, announced availability of the 1.2 version of Fiserv Advanced Billing, a Web-based system utilizing the J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) platform.

NEW YORK-- A poll of attendees at The Conference Group's 16th Annual Executive Conference for the Property-Casualty Industry has found that executives expect changes in the brokerage and regulatory models to have fundamental and long-lasting effects on the industry, including downward pressure on industry compensation, with pricing likely to increase.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--Computer Sciences Corporation

BOSTON--Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) has purchased the Interwoven Enterprise Web Change Management solution, powered by Interwoven OpenDeploy, to enable faster, accurate and cost-effective synchronization of a disaster recovery site for its member and provider Websites. BCBSMA also purchased the Interwoven Self-Service solution to maintain fresh, personalized content on its Provider Portal.

PORTSMOUTH, NH--Bottomline Technologies today announced the expansion of the company's financial Business Process Management (fBPM) solutions. These fBPM solutions are designed to streamline paper-driven order-to-cash and purchase-to pay processes -- enabling organizations to more effectively manage their financial assets and trading partner relationships.