Core systems

American Safety Insurance (ASI) wanted to eliminate unnecessary manual tasks that were required to unify several stand-along legacy systems. Therefore, the insurer began an initiative in 2010 to consolidate all underwriting units across the company onto a single policy administration system, which included five components: a policy admin and rating system, agency and broker master file management technology, reporting software, document management software and forms generation technology, all from different vendors.

In a tough operating environment, the title insurance industry persevered with improvements in many major financial and operational categories in 2011, including composite ratio, and in a new special report, A.M. Best expects these successes to be surpassed in 2012.

Great American Insurance Group, nominated for a Practice award, wanted to create a competitive advantage and excellent customer experience by offering customer mobile applications to deliver self-service functionality.

Provider of risk financing and loss prevention services for Texas municipalities calls on software provider in attempt to become more proactive with claims.

WellPoint Inc., the second-biggest U.S. health insurer, will reorganize into four business units in the first major move undertaken by interim Chief Executive Officer John Cannon.

As demand for mobile, big data, cloud and virtualization initiatives continues to grow, so does the demand for (and salaries of) qualified IT professionals.

Novarica Research Council Impact Award Nominee of the Day: Leveraging a project and portfolio management application, Erie Insurance took on a transformation initiative to track all costs across 13 discreet portfolios.

Insurers that have invested in analytics tools in the past year are just beginning to recognize their ability to manage producers and improve their performance with the technology.

Data and analytics at the top; staff development becoming more important, according to Novarica research reported at this week’s PCI Information Technology Conference.

Data and analytics at the top; staff development becoming more important, according to Novarica research reported at this week’s PCI Information Technology Conference.

While online resources continue to gain influence over consumers, agents and brokers remain the top resource overall.

Willis report finds weak economy, low underwriting losses and abundant capacity create mix of rates for commercial P&C carriers.

Strong third quarter earnings from P&C insurers is expected by Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

Insurer looks to e-Discovery software suite to advance its legal, IT infrastructure.

Allianz survey finds those ages 55 to 65 most concerned about rising healthcare costs and Social Security, regardless of political affiliations.

Newly formed Global Federation of Insurance Associations will comment on issues affecting the global insurance industry and its regulation.

Digital signatures brought to the cloud in support of E.U. eSignature laws.

Over the past five years, commercial auto insurance has experienced the most consistent underwriting results compared to other commercial lines and has generated better results than personal auto, despite the difference in the sizes of the markets, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings. Allstate Corp., Erie Insurance Group and Progressive have the strongest commercial auto underwriting margin over the last five years.

UnitedHealth Group Inc., the biggest U.S. health insurance company, agreed to pay about $4.9 billion to buy 90 percent of Amil Participacoes SA, a Brazil-based insurer and hospital chain that gives the American company a stake in the world’s second-biggest emerging economy.

Insurance software solutions provider Dovetail Insurance has won the Palmetto Pillar Award for cloud computing, which is sponsored by the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with the Columbia Information Technology Council. The award is intended to honor the Midlands' technology leaders, innovators and IT executives.