Frimley UK--Candle Corporation, a leading enterprise infrastructure management provider, today announced that Royal Liver Assurance has selected Candle`s PathWAIsolutions to support the development, implementation and management of its IBM WebSphere application infrastructure using Linux. Candle`s PathWAI solutions enable organisations to accelerate application infrastructure development and deployment, ensure consistent performance and enhance management control.

NEW YORK--Directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance premiums increased approximately 33% on average from 2002 to 2003, according to the Tillinghast business of Towers Perrin's 2003 Directors & Officers Liability Survey.

The New Jersey Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision Thursday supporting the insurance industry's views that wrongful death and survival actions do not trigger separate "per person" coverage claims under an automobile liability insurance policy.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin--COSS Development Corporation, a specialist in illustration and point of sale systems for the financial services industry, has released Journey 2004. Journey is COSS' premier needs-based financial modeling software. The new 2004 version, for both Web and desktop, is now being distributed to current users as an upgrade.

St. Louis, MO--Genelco Software Solutions, a division of Liberty Insurance Services Corporation (LIS), today announced the positive results of a Genelco Group+ benchmark test completed at the IBM eServer iSeries Benchmark Center in Rochester, Minnesota.

New Haven, CT- Metaserver, Inc., a leading provider of business process integration (BPI) solutions for the insurance industry, announced it has launched its new iConnect agency interface solution for Property and Casualty carriers. The first of several solutions designed specially for insurance carriers, iConnect P&C is compatible with and extends the capabilities provided by leading vendors in the insurance space such as ChoicePoint, CSC, Duck Creek, ISO, IVANS and others.

MALVERN, Pa. -- A new study by the Insurance Research Council (IRC) finds that reported losses in auto injury claims are escalating in spite of the fact that the rate of serious auto injuries has decreased. In the past five years, increases in the average amounts that auto injury claimants report for expenses stemming from their injuries, particularly among personal injury protection and medical payments first-party claimants, are nearly double the annualized growth in medical inflation. Additionally, they are three times higher than increases in general inflation.

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Beacon Research announced today that it has been selected to provide a customized front-end application for BISYS' producer Web site. The application will enable BISYS-affiliated agents and brokers to easily and quickly select the most appropriate fixed annuities for their clients.

Conshohocken, PA- eMoney Advisor, a leading provider of wealth planning solutions, today announced that First Commonwealth Financial Corporation has selected eMoney's AdvisorPlatform as the basis for its wealth management and planning services offered through First Commonwealth Financial Advisors, First Commonwealth Trust Company and First Commonwealth Insurance Agency. The eMoney system will be used by advisors throughout these affiliates to provide more comprehensive services to their clients.

DxCG Inc., an independent provider of predictive modeling software for health care organizations, today announced that Tufts Health Plan has signed a multi-year contract to license DxCG's RiskSmart, its Web-based suite of predictive modeling tools. Waltham, Mass.-based Tufts Health Plan joins other leading Massachusetts health plans, providers and payers using DxCG's predictive modeling tools to improve the financial forecasting of its health care operations.

First Notice Systems Inc., the leader in claim reporting solutions for the insurance industry, and Guidewire Software Inc., a leading provider of claims solutions to property and casualty and workers' compensation insurers, today announced the formation of a strategic alliance that gives insurance carriers an end-to-end claims reporting and management solution. Customers of both companies can now easily leverage First Notice's expertise and value-added services at first notice of loss and Guidewire's downstream claims processing system to enhance claims handling procedures and improve customer service.

HARTFORD, Conn.--Travelers Life & Annuity today announced the availability of its Annuity Funded Life and Muni Max products on pTeraDac Corporation's WebStory, a customized Web-based presentation system that links directly from Travelers WinFlex and Travelers Life Illustration Systems. WebStory Advanced Marketing Presentation System provides text, schematics and graphics to help the producer develop and present sales strategies in a format that facilitates the client's ease of understanding.

Last October, when Allstate Insurance Co. developed a plan to best assess damage and settle claims in the wake of the Southern California wildfires, the Northbrook, Ill.-based company reasoned it would be counterproductive to set up operations in brick-and-mortar offices located in the vicinity of the fire's epicenter.With the fire spreading and local residents scurrying to find shelter, Allstate established a unique operational presence to conduct business amid the blazing inferno, dispatching some of its local claims adjusters and a 270-person national catastrophe team to operate out of six mobile response units (MRU) scattered around the area.

Barring another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, or some other catastrophic event, U.S. insurance companies are cautiously optimistic about the economy in 2004. As a result, IT budgets in the industry on average are increasing slightly this year.Research from Celent, Datamonitor, Forrester and TowerGroup suggests insurers will add as much as 10% to their IT budgets this year, with an average increase between 2.5% and 6.7%.

Although storage area network (SAN) technology has been around for several years, it's been mainly limited to big-budget IT operations, due to cost and complexity.However, the economics of SANs have been changing, thanks to more robust management tools, as well as the fact that SANs can now be deployed without expensive fibre channel technology.

Insurers are turning introspective. They lived a charmed life when healthy investment returns covered for a lack of efficiency within their operations. Now, they have shifted their focus from asset management back to insurance basics.A new survey performed by the global insurance services practice of New York City-based Deloitte notes that insurers have shifted their focus after a protracted period of low interest rates and volatility in the equity markets.

Information technology in the healthcare industry should not be rocket science. That's the opinion of a former aerospace engineer, Charles C. Emery, Jr., who is senior vice president and chief information officer for Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of New Jersey.

Back in early 2002, the office environment at World Insurance Co. resembled a noisy beehive with workers faxing, printing, copying, retrieving documents from warehouse storage and chatting while carrying out those tasks.

Despite insurers' best intentions to align business strategy with IT strategy, recent studies show that more than 80% of insurance companies can improve on that alignment.That's according to Deborah Smallwood, insurance practice leader at TowerGroup Inc., a Needham, Mass.-based research and advisory firm. At press time, Smallwood was completing a study of six property/casualty carriers, and, although she couldn't release her findings, she said she gets frustrated because the alignment still isn't there-and there's so much need for improvement.

There are a number of storage area network (SAN) management tools now on the market to help automate and monitor storage management processes.At Mid-Continent Casualty Insurance Co., Tulsa, Okla., for example, the expansion of the company's SAN introduced an array of new Intel-based servers to the data center.