AUSTIN, TX--Webify Solutions, a provider of On Demand Applications for the insurance industry, today announced that Fireman's Fund Insurance Company (FFIC), a leading provider of property and casualty insurance products, has selected and begun to implement Webify's service oriented business applications.

ALPHARETTA, Ga.-- ChoicePoint, a provider of identification and credential verification services, today announced its acquisition of InsurQuote, a leading provider of insurance rating solutions to the property and casualty carrier markets.

University Park, IL--Vista Equity Partners and James P. Kellner have acquired Applied Systems, Inc., the insurance software company born 20 years ago in suburban Chicago as a one-product, home-based business that grew to become the leading provider of automation solutions in the property and casualty insurance industry.

Newark, Calif.--Responding to increases in the frequency and severity of global terrorist activity in each of the past three years, Risk Management Solutions (RMS), the world's leading provider of products and services for the management of catastrophe risk, today announced the launch of a new suite of tools designed to help insurers and reinsurers manage terrorism risk outside the U.S. The tools include the industry's first Global Terrorism Risk Model, as well as a multi-country expansion of the RMS(R) Terrorism Scenario Model and accumulation management functionality in the company's RiskLink(R) catastrophe management software.

LOS ANGELES--RPost, The Registered e-Mail Company (www.rpost.com), announced today its revolutionary (R)egistered e-Mail(R) product has been endorsed by The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers. The Council represents the top one-percent of all commercial property/casualty and employee benefits brokers in the United States, a group that places 80 percent of commercial insurance premiums.

PeopleSoft and IBM will jointly market and deliver integrated, cross-functional industry solutions targeted at solving some of the most difficult business process challenges facing companies today.

ANDOVER, Mass.-- CGI Group Inc. (CGI) announced the release of INSideOUT Version 9. INSideOUT's Version 9 offers significant value to customers by improving productivity and lowering maintenance costs.

PORTLAND, Ore-- Standard Insurance Company, a subsidiary of StanCorp Financial Group, Inc., has launched The Standard Advisor Partner, a new service model created to develop business partnerships between The Standard and third party administrators and pension consultants.

NEW YORK, Sept. 20--Total data storage-related industry revenues are expected to increase approximately 5% for full-year 2004, says Standard & Poor's Equity Research in a new, semiannual study of the industry.

CARLSBAD, Calif. and QUINCY, Mass., --Arbella Insurance Group, a property & casualty insurer, has chosen Document Sciences Corporation's ReadyForms as their enterprise document automation solution. ReadyForms provides a library of pre-built electronic bureau forms, complete with pre-defined business rules for automated forms assembly, and delivery via Document Sciences' xPression content processing technology.

PEARL RIVER, NY--At a September 8 ceremony in London, ACORD as presented with The Review Worldwide Reinsurance Industry Initiative of the Year Award for 2004. ACORD President and CEO, Gregory A. Maciag, accepted the award on behalf of ACORD's more than 480 members worldwide.

BATON ROUGE, La. - While Louisiana's new insurance high-risk pool hasn't had enough time to build up a financial cushion to absorb the potential effects of Hurricane Ivan, other reforms in place should enable insurers to pay ensuing claims.

When Jacksonville, Fla.-based Allstate Workplace Division, a provider of disability income, hospital indemnity, term and universal life and supplemental insurance products, developed an electronic worksite application called AllApp, the company went out to the field to build a consensus about how the application should be designed.

September 14, 2004 -MI-Assistant, a division of Fiserv FSC, Inc. announced today that independent insurance distributors in five Midwestern states are now writing auto insurance faster and more efficiently using a bridging system that connects MI Comparative rater, MI-Assistant's rating program with Safeco Insurance's Safeco Now online sales platform.

SAN FRANCISCO--Esurance, a direct-to-consumer personal auto insurance company, announced the launch of its new service powered by eStara, Inc. eStara's Push to Talk is a fully-hosted, Voice over the Internet (VoIP) "click to call" service, the most widely-deployed service of its kind in the world. The click to call feature allows Esurance customers to click a button to speak with an Esurance insurance advisor directly from Esurance's Web site, from PC-to-phone or through phone-to-phone calls.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Humana Inc. is taking full advantage of processing efficiencies from technology investments and changing market dynamics by naming Availity LLC its primary gateway for the submission of claims and encounters. Under this national arrangement, Humana is asking all of its major clearinghouses to send submissions destined for Humana through Availity.

ST. LOUIS--With 120-mile-per-hour winds and devastating force, Hurricane Charley ripped into the Alligator Mobile Home Park in Punta Gorda, Florida earlier in the month. If the destruction wasn't enough, just two weeks later Hurricane Frances hit Florida 's East coast with 100 mile-per-hour winds. RVs were overturned, belongings strewn for hundreds of yards, and in its wake, hundreds of RVers were left homeless and stranded, their lives threatened to come to a screeching halt.

When it comes to e-commerce, insurers have made a lot of progress over the past several years. They've equipped their employees with browser-based policy, claims, and customer service applications. They've developed self-service features for policyholders on their Web sites. And they've rolled out real-time transactions-such as quoting, policy issuance and inquiry-to their agents and brokers.But just as the insurance industry is embracing the Internet and increasingly harnessing its ability to improve productivity and operational efficiency, malicious attacks--which can bring down corporate networks and compromise confidential company and customer information--are growing exponentially.

Protecting clients against disasters may be the bread and butter of many insurance companies. But many carriers have only just begun to take a hard look at their own business continuity strategies, especially when it comes to information technology systems."Insurers are there to protect and indemnify individuals against disasters and unforeseen accidents, but they have not really invested as aggressively-or at least thought about it as much-as banks and financial services have done," observes Bill Pieroni, general manager for IBM Corp.'s global insurance industry practice.

The landmark outsourcing deal that Zurich Financial Services signed in July begs this question: Is outsourcing back in vogue, or is Zurich's situation unique?Insurance executives surely will scrutinize the results and ramifications of Zurich's seven-year, $1.3 billion application maintenance and development deal with CSC. For starters, the arrangement is expected to save Zurich $300 million over the seven-year period. But more importantly, executives will be keenly interested in how Zurich is able to execute its business strategy, now that responsibility for new application development is out of the hands of Zurich's IT staff.