Core systems

With another expiration of funding for the National Flood Insurance Program looming, a continuing resolution to keep the program afloat has passed the Senate by unanimous consent.

Warm weather offers favorable conditions for car thieves, while holidays and cold weather bode well for potential victims, according to a new report from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB).

Despite high levels of unemployment, U.S. business leaders say one of the biggest risks they’re facing is a talent and skills shortage, according to the 2011 Lloyd’s Risk Index.

As an IT solution for complex integration, service-oriented architecture (SOA) has seen success in some insurers’ organizations. However, from a business and architecture perspective, it leaves more to be desired, according to a new report issued today by Boston-based research and consulting firm Celent.

In 2012, the U.S. life and annuity insurance industry will be challenged to find ways to manage both capital and risk in an economically and politically uncertain year, while continuing to lay the groundwork for future growth, according to Ernst & Young's new Global Insurance Center U.S. Outlook report.

Insurers in Britain may have a new data set to consider in their predictive analytics endeavors: the increase in claims due to personal lines property/casualty policyholders’ “do-it-yourself” (DIY) home improvements.

American Fidelity Assurance Co. has chosen Wolters Kluwer Financial Services’ NILS INsource and NILS INcompass offerings to help monitor and implement regulatory changes.

Last decade, car crashes were the leading cause of teen deaths, with 16-year-old drivers possessing crash rates two times greater than 18-to-19-year-old drivers and four times that of older drivers. But Allstate and the National Safety Council think they know how to cut into the 81,000 fatalities resulting from crashes involving teen drivers between 2000 and 2009, claiming in a new report that nationwide GDL laws have the potential to prevent over 2,000 such deaths and save $13.6 billion annually.

The soft pricing that has defined the property/casualty market for years may finally be ebbing.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has issued a final rule to make available standardized extracts of Medicare claims data to facilitate measuring the performance of providers and suppliers. The rule has significant changes that enable use of clinical data along with the claims data.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has published a final rule, with a comment period, establishing health insurers' "medical loss ratios," including provisions to account for ICD-10 conversion costs.

As a teetering Euro threatens more disruption in world financial markets, a new survey reveals widespread concern among those responsible for risk management at U.K.-based insurance companies.

Would customers react less negatively if their insurance company informed them about rate hikes personally over the phone versus a written letter? A new white paper by The Forum: Business Results Through People suggests that customers are less inclined to perceive a business negatively if price increases are communicated in-person, over the phone rather than through the mail.

Having suffered five of the top ten deadliest natural disasters in history, with recent events affecting over 70 percent of its land area and more than half its population, China presents ongoing challenges to the insurance market. According to a new market report released by Aon Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary of Aon Corp., these and other challenges are complex and amplified by the scale of the market and the speed of its development.

A.M. Best's recent catastrophe-related loss estimates reveal a bad first nine months of 2011 for U.S. P&C insurers. According to the agency's briefing “U.S. Property/Casualty Catastrophe Losses Climb to $38.6 Billion for the First Nine Months of 2011,” the estimated total net pretax accident-year catastrophe-related losses were $38.6 billion, up $22.5 billion (140 percent), from an estimated $16.1 billion reported during the same period a year ago.

CGI Federal Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Canada-based CGI Group, announced that it has been awarded a $93.7 million contract by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) to build the U.S. government’s federal health insurance exchange.

One-third of office-based physicians have a "basic" electronic health records or electronic medical records system, according to preliminary figures from the federal 2011 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.

Even though they know it’s dangerous and, depending where they are, against the law, drivers continue to text behind the wheel, and Allstate Insurance Co. and Manitoba Public Insurance are doing their part to put an end to it.

Property/casualty insurers may well be relieved that the 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season officially ended this week. This year, the season counted 19 tropical storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes (Category 3 or above on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) resulting in insurance claims.

Mobile devices and network capabilities will lead growth areas in IT and information management in 2012, with cloud services adoption and enablement not far behind, according to IDC’s annual market predictions.