HARTFORD TEAMS WITH TECH GROUPThe Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., Hartford, Conn., is working with the largest technology trade association in Washington State to offer policies designed for the technology industry. The insurer will market the insurance to members of the Seattle-based WSA (formerly the Washington Software Association) through brokers and independent agents. Nationwide, the Hartford insures more than 50,000 technology companies.

WHITEHILL SOFTWARE HELPS CREATE POLICIESWhitehill Technologies, Moncton, New Brunswick, has shipped a new release of the InSystems product line, which helps create insurance policies. IStream Publisher 3.2 simplifies production of insurance documents by managing the process from the first draft of the contract language through the issuing of the policy. The software also supports service-oriented architecture (SOA), which increases IT agility, and includes predefined services for retrieval, assembly, rendering, delivery and storage.

The world record for the largest game of Chinese Whispers, also known as the telephone game or Pass It Down, was set by entertainer Mac King, Jan. 6, 2004, and involved 614 people.While it's safe to say King didn't pass on a message about ways to sell long-term care insurance, carriers and agents may be able to relate to the game of Chinese Whispers. Clear and efficient communication among the two groups can become difficult. And adding communication among agents and consumers can muddy the water even more.

Insurance Networking News asked David Pedersen, senior vice president at Insurity, Hartford, Conn., to explain how a data integration project can evolve from an enterprisewide objective to a successful way of life.INN: Do most insurance companies have a data strategy, and why is it important?

Liability Insurance Administrators (LIA), Santa Barbara, Calif., was drowning in paper and all the costs associated with generating it, filing it and keeping it around. With an average of 15,000 to 20,000 active existing insurance policy underwriting files, the firm, which provides error and omissions policies to real estate appraisers, found itself having to hire new clerical staff to handle processing, as well as finding new space for all the documents."In the beginning, we just had one clerical person who would answer phones, do the filing, issue quotes, and do all other clerical work," says Robert Wiley, LIA assistant vice president. "As the company grew year after year, we had to start divvying up those duties to stand-alone positions, receptionist, clerical staff and filing staff. Eventually we had to keep increasing our filing staff, and we're now at the point where we're an office of about 29 people. And we have four full-time file staff and three part timers."

CAT CLAIMSCustard Insurance Adjusters, a Norcross, Ga., independent loss adjusting company, contracted with Marshall and Swift/Boeckh (MSB), New Berlin, Wis., for MSB's IntegriClaim tool for field estimating and for its IntegriClaim Administrator, which provides a paperless, Web-enabled work environment, for use in Custard's catastrophe and home office claims divisions. The technology package will send claims seamlessly from the carrier to independent adjusters.

The rapid proliferation of enterprise content, such as electronic documents, audiovisual files, instant messaging (IM), recorded phone conversations and e-mail, is having significant impact on the global insurance industry.Insurers now face severe penalties if they are unable to produce legally viable records of business conversations and transactions. Additionally, globalization, the dispersion of data and strict compliance regulations are key drivers of this emerging industry mindset.

Hartford, Conn., October 23, 2006 – To help agents speed up the decision process and provide quotes for eligible small business customers, Travelers Select Accounts division of Hartford, Conn.-based St. Paul Travelers Cos. Inc. has introduced TravelersExpress for Master Pac.TravelersExpress is an approach to processing new small commercial policy applicants because risk evaluation and pricing are delivered to the agent up front during the submission process. It will be available initially to agents in Illinois, Utah and Nevada and rolled out nationally in 2007.

Los Angeles - Farmers Insurance Group of Cos. introduces its new Mobile Catastrophe Command Center bus, which is designed to help its customers immediately after a catastrophe that may strike anywhere in the contiguous United States."The new Farmers Mobile Command Center bus was chosen as the catastrophe center-point for handling claims and servicing our customers," explains Frank Soldano, state executive, Farmers Insurance Group, Kansas. "The bus is equipped with the most state-of-the-art equipment available anywhere in the United States. It will enable Farmers claims representatives to offer claims help to our customers immediately following a catastrophe," Soldano said.

Richmond, Va. - Genworth Financial Inc. completed its acquisition of AssetMark Investment Services Inc. AssetMark is a Pleasant Hill, Calif.-based provider of open architecture asset management solutions to independent financial advisors, with approximately $9 billion in assets under management.Under terms of the agreement, Richmond, Va.-based Genworth paid $230 million for AssetMark and will make additional performance-based payments of up to $100 million over the next five years.

Washington - The commercial property/casualty market continued to soften during the third quarter, with indications that some insurers are finding an appetite for business in which they previously were not interested, according to the latest commercial market index survey by The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers (CIAB). As has been the case the entire year, however, coastal property and catastrophe-prone risks remain costly and hard to place, brokers responding to the survey said. The Council represents domestic and international commercial insurance brokers and agents who annually write more than 80% of the commercial property/casualty premiums in the United States and administer billions of dollars in benefits accounts. Six out of 10 commercial insurance brokers and agents responding to the survey said their small accounts experienced decreases in renewal premiums during the third quarter, and three quarters of the brokers responding who handle large and medium-sized accounts reported that their customers had drops in premium rates. The majority of the decreases were in the 1-10% range for small, medium and large accounts, the brokers said. An analysis of The Council's survey results by New York-based Lehman Brothers showed that the average premium rates for all commercial accounts decreased 5.3% during the third quarter. The Lehman analysis showed the average small commercial account premium down 3.4%, the average medium account premium down 5.1%, and the average large account premium down 7.3%during the third quarter. As premium prices fall and underwriters become hungry for new business, the agents and brokers said that insurers are starting to be more aggressive in pricing and more liberal in policy terms. Types of properties "normally considered unattractive" such as car dealers, restaurants, not-for-profit and habitational are being looked at with renewed interest, CIAB's report said. Meanwhile, it was another story altogether for coastal exposures, according to CIAB's respondents, with wind, flood and property capacity still tight, deductibles and exclusions on the rise. Some carriers are expanding their definition of coastal property to business within 60-70 miles of the seacoast and categorizing areas such as the Chesapeake Bay as coastal. Any catastrophe-prone property was likely to experience difficulty securing coverage, CIAB reports the brokers and agents said, with premium levels at historic highs. Although the problems appeared to be the worst in Florida and along the Southeast coast, one respondent reported commercial earthquake rates up as high as 50 to 150% in Southern California. For complete regional and national data charts, go to www.ciab.com/marketsurveyQ306.

New York and Saint Paul, Minn. – Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. (MetLife) and Travelers Insurance Group Holdings Inc. renewed their agreement to offer Synchrony absence management services.Synchrony combines group disability insurance and the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) administration from MetLife with workers compensation insurance and claim administration services from Travelers to deliver one, integrated approach that can help companies better manage employee absences whether due to occupational or non-occupational events and assist employees in returning to work as soon as medically appropriate. First offered by the two companies in 1998, Synchrony programs currently cover more than 180,000 employees.

Bedford, Mass. - As seen just a day earlier, insurers are embracing SOA (see "Survey Says Insurance Carriers Are Embracing SOA"). But new survey results insist that governance is not keeping pace with the adoption of SOAs at most organizations—of which include financial services, banking, government, insurance, healthcare and pharmaceutical.The online survey, conducted by New Rochelle, N.Y.-based ebizQ and sponsored by Bedford, Mass.-based Progress Software Corp., consisted of 313 respondents. While the survey shows that the majority of organizations are actively pursuing SOA, most are relying on manual processes to enforce SOA governance. Less than 6% have automated runtime monitoring of policies, and fewer than 5% automatically check services for policy enforcement before services are checked into a repository.

Needham, Mass. - The insurance industry is rapidly embracing service-oriented architecture (SOA), as well as related Web services and standards, according to TowerGroup research conducted in partnership with ACORD. TowerGroup interviewed senior leadership executives at more than 12 carriers and conducted more than 150 hours of data gathering and analysis across the industry (covering property/casualty, life and annuity, and reinsurance).Key findings of the study, according to Needham, Mass.-based TowerGroup, include:

Hamilton, Bermuda - Big European insurance companies are embracing industrial operating models to cut costs and improve customer service, according to an Accenture survey of senior executives at 30 carriers based in Europe.The survey revealed that 92% of respondents are assigning high priority to "industrialization"--the use of standardized operating and production platforms similar to those used by manufacturers. The rest of the respondents--the other 8%--say they expect industrialization to become a priority in the next three years.

Houston - The insurance industry, where companies face an average of 1,696 lawsuits, spanning product liability and environmental class actions to directors and officers claims, and even coverage fights over hurricanes and terrorist attacks, faces the most litigation when compared to other industries, according to a survey from international law firm Fulbright & Jaworski LLP, headquartered in Houston. Retailers and energy firms reported average caseloads north of 330 per company, which doesn't even come close to the insurance industry.In its third annual survey of corporate litigation trends—pulling data from 422 in-house law departments worldwide—Fulbright found that U.S. companies face an average of 305 pending lawsuits internationally. For large U.S. companies—those with $1 billion or more in annual gross revenue—the number of lawsuits soared to 556 cases, with an average of 50 new disputes emerging each year for close to half of them.

Two celebrated anti-aging experts are joining Humana Inc. in what the company calls a multi-media campaign to turn passive healthcare users into active healthcare consumers.

Jersey City, N.J. - ISO, a Jersey City, N.J., provider of data, analytics and decision-support solutions, is extending its product set and focus to the healthcare industry with its plans to acquire the assets of Urix, a Cheshire, Conn., provider of healthcare analytics and employer reporting solutions. Terms were not disclosed. The Urix product set includes Web-based business solutions that enable health insurers, national brokerage firms and large employers to derive strategies to improve the quality of health care while lowering the cost of delivery. Urix is a developer of Web-based healthcare analytic solutions that are scalable and cost-effective, the companies report. ISO entered the healthcare sector in 2004 with the purchase of Boston-based DxCG, a company widely recognized as a world leader in predictive modeling software solutions. ISO will form a single company containing the Urix and DxCG assets doing business under the Urix brand name. Urix CEO John Farrell will serve as president of the combined entity; Michael Coyne will serve as COO. "With so many synergies between the Urix business intelligence solutions and DxCG predictive modeling capabilities, it makes sense to combine our assets and approach the market with a unified set of solutions," said Michael Coyne, head of DxCG. "Our teams will create new and, in many cases, unique solutions by working together closely," continued Coyne. ISO's chairman, president and chief executive officer, Frank Coyne, cited ISO's plans to combine Urix and ISO's DxCG unit as "an excellent opportunity for ISO to expand its presence in the healthcare business intelligence market by leveraging complementary strengths in both companies' product lines. We expect the new entity to lead the market with a host of solutions designed to improve the quality and efficiency of our nation's healthcare system," said ISO's CEO. Source: ISO

Washington, D.C. – From stepping up with renewable energy projects to incorporating futuristic underwriting models, the insurance industry must do more to address the growing impact of climate change-induced damages, according to a new report by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Munich-based global insurer Allianz Group.

Mountain View, Calif. - eHealth Inc., the parent company of eHealthInsurance Services Inc., spent $50 million developing an electronic platform to sell health insurance through the Internet. The company’s business model? Serve the growing market of uninsured and underinsured consumers with online tools and ultimate health insurance products. The Mountain View, Calif., company, plans to raise $47.1 million in an initial public offering next week. In its prospectus the market for private health insurance brokering is a mess, stating that except for large companies buying insurance in bulk, finding medical coverage is time-consuming, paper-wasting, complicated and expensive. Most individuals, families and small businesses who buy their own medical coverage find insurers using local agents who serve a single community, offering insurance from a small handful or even a single insurance carrier. Through its Web site, eHealth has sold health insurance electronically to 325,000 consumers, and points to this statistic: More than 40% of those customers were uninsured before finding the site. That means the company thinks its site, which offers 5,000 health insurance products through 150 insurers, including Aetna and UnitedHealth, can tap into an underserved and fragmented corner of the estimated $658 billion market for private medical insurance. About 17 million Americans, including self-employed people, buy their own medical insurance (as opposed to electing coverage through an employer's plan), and the company said that number is growing. A rising number of small businesses have stopped offering medical benefits to employees, forcing these people to buy their own coverage or risk life without insurance, the company said. The U.S. Census estimates 46 million Americans are uninsured, and the company said many of these people have jobs, make decent salaries and would buy their own coverage if only they could find an affordable plan. That's where eHealth's business model comes in. eHealth's site offers online rate quoting and information, health plan comparisons, and online applications linking consumers with insurers. The variety of policy offerings and efficient brokering process in theory would help consumers find cheaper coverage. As a broker, eHealth offers insurers new market opportunities, access to electronic data about consumers and simplified policy processing, which reduces costs. The company takes a percentage off the insurers' premiums. In 2005, eHealth booked $41.8 million in revenue, almost all from brokerage commissions, compared with $9.3 million in 2001. For the six months ending June 30, 2006, eHealth reported net income of $2.7 million, compared with a net loss of $209,000 for the same period a year ago. The company, led by Chief Executive Gary L. Lauer, has lost money most quarters since its 1997 founding as it sinks money into technology and marketing through direct mail, television and radio. But it hopes that by harnessing the Internet, it can grab a large share of a huge and largely untapped market. The company plans to sell 5 million shares at $10 to $12 apiece, giving the deal a proposed market cap of $271 million, and is reportedly using joint-lead managing underwriters such as Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. The stock will trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol "EHTH." Source: Associated Press, MSN Money, Red Herring