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First-time homebuyers who are preparing to sign off on a mortgage loan aren't always cognizant of the sudden long-term financial needs that await them. But savvy financial services providers are."Through the proper customer relationship management technology, we're well positioned to drill down and tailor individual products for customers," David deGorter, president of Charlotte, N.C.-based First Union Insurance Group, explains.

Insurance executives apparently are unfazed by the dot-com meltdown of 2001. Business-to-business e-commerce clearly dominates the IT efforts of insurance carriers as they seek to increase online product delivery and data exchange with business partners, according to the findings of a recent survey of 73 carriers, agents and brokers conducted by Insurance Networking.

Conseco Inc. has undergone rapid change in Gary Wendt's brief tenure as chairman and CEO. In 10 months at the helm of the Indianapolis-based insurance and consumer finance company, Wendt has overseen the disposal of $1.7 billion of assets-including a $122 million stake in the Argosy Gaming riverboat-and the elimination of 2,000 jobs at Conseco Finance.In April, the company stepped up its efforts to rein in expenses by announcing plans to shift some of the company's call center servicing and back-office processing to India. Related to this decision, Conseco is acquiring exlService, a firm specializing in these functions which is based in Hyderbat, India.

Following in the footsteps of the American Bankers Asso-ciation Insurance Association (ABAIA), which proposed an optional federal charter for insurers, Washington, D.C.-based American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) has released its own draft proposal-this one geared to the life insurance industry.The draft-which was assembled by about 30 working groups involving more than 200 ACLI member companies-calls for the creation of the National Insurer Act, the National Insurer Solvency Act and an Office of National Insurers in the Department of the Treasury.

When colleagues describe Robert V. James, there's no mistaking him for the tradition-bound stereotype of an insurance executive. Instead, they use such adjectives as progressive, creative and charismatic.Co-workers credit his high energy for rapid changes at Chicago-based CNA Insurance Cos. As executive vice president of CNA's Technology Solutions Group, James has attracted top talent to his team, launched an eBusiness initiative from scratch and revolutionized the way the insurer communicates with its agents.

On November 13, 1999-the day after the passage of The Financial Services Modernization Act-insurance companies formed steering committees, project teams and task groups to determine what work needed to be done to comply with Title V of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB) legislation. Title V requires financial services institutions to establish privacy policies and deliver notices by July 1, 2001 to their customers informing them of how the company uses and shares nonpublic personal information. If a company shares that information with nonaffiliated third parties for marketing purposes, customers must be able to "opt-out" of such sharing. Thereafter, companies must distribute an annual privacy notice to their customers.

As a provider of group pension programs, New York-based Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America understands that when it comes to mutual fund policyholders, many have an insatiable desire for data that will help them maximize their investments.Unlike typically static health and life coverage, 401(k) plan participants regularly juggle fund portfolios on a weekly or monthly basis. Even if they don't engage in fund reallocation, group pension customers are inveterate monitors of their fund balances-many doing so on a daily basis.

As the July 1 deadline nears, insurers have developed and begun to distribute their privacy policies to customers, but most companies in general haven't thought about privacy as a component of customer relationship management (CRM), industry observers say."No one is looking at privacy from the perspective of how can we establish a value proposition in which the customers will say, 'yes, please share my information,'" says Peter Reid, privacy director at Fiderus, a Research Triangle, N.C.-based security and privacy consulting firm. Privacy can be good for business-as opposed to something that is being legislated, he says.

Because their fortunes hinge significantly on fickle Mother Nature-such as natural disasters and other weather-related occurrences-farmers are meticulous about their insurance coverage.

Extensible Markup Language, or XML, has received a whirlwind of hype since its creation in 1998, promising the ultimate universal format for all exchanges of company data.But to seasoned technology experts, this promise was initially made more than a decade ago with EDI, which also portended massive efficiencies and savings in business-to-business transactions.

Last year, the Connecticut FAIR plan purchased a software package to create, print and mail policies for property coverage. But that turned into a near-nightmarish experience of extensive problems with setup and testing of the software and lengthy delays waiting for technical issues to be resolved.

Making good on its promise to vigorously defend a lawsuit filed Feb. 20 by eHealth-Insurance Services Inc., InsWeb Corp. filed a countersuit March 22 in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, San Jose.InsWeb is denying allegations made by eHealthInsurance that InsWeb sent a considerable number of illegitimate referrals to a co-branded Web site built and maintained by eHealthInsurance (see "eHealthInsurance Sues InsWeb," April).

During MetLife Inc.'s arduous process last year of converting to a public company, CEO Robert Benmosche told Wall Street investors that the New York-based company would increase its use of technology to reduce expenses and its non-agent workforce by 5%.

After several years of sitting on the sidelines, insurance carriers are now getting up to speed in selling products over the Internet. However, dealing with the state-based regulatory system, which requires carriers to jump through multiple hoops to engage in e-commerce on a national basis, threatens to slow their efforts to a crawl.

Darwin's theory of natural selection proclaims that the strong species will thrive, while the weak will vanish. It's not unlike carriers' Web sites, where the best ones may have the inside track on survival.In the mid-1990s, when insurance carriers were developing corporate Web sites, many discovered they could do little wrong in the eyes of their online constituency-particularly casual users with modest expectations.

When Allstate made its bold move to direct sales, the Northbrook, Ill.-based carrier handed responsibility for the endeavor to one of its most-experienced executives. Steven Groot, an actuary and a lawyer, has been rising through the ranks of Allstate for more than three decades.

Despite huge corporate investments in personal computers, electronic mail and document scanners, the paperless workplace is still a pipe dream. Indeed, the insurance industry in particular is drowning in a white sea of computer-generated documents, customer correspondence and faxes.

The insurance industry was one of the last to open its private gates to the Internet. Apprehension about exposing confidential customer information and other proprietary data to the outside world prevented insurance companies from jumping too quickly on the e-business bandwagon.

The financial success or failure of a property & casualty carrier largely depends on the company's ability to manage risk. Based on sophisticated actuarial models, carriers can formulate a risk model for virtually every type of physical risk exposure, and through these assumptions decide whether the risk is worth bearing.

Centralizing IT by creating a separate company is a strategy that USAA, Prudential and Kemper have pursued to bring greater financial accountability to their IT operations.When USAA created its technology subsidiary in January 1998, the primary objective for the standalone, for-profit company was to introduce financial discipline to the San Antonio-based organization's procurement of information technology.