Core systems

New York - The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America has launched a new proprietary Web-based system designed to help financial representatives use the Internet to enable their clients to instantly gauge their financial health.Using the system, financial representatives and their clients can coordinate accounts from a menu of more than 3,000 financial institutions, access copies of legal and financial documents from anywhere in the world, and get an up- to-date snapshot of their financial well-being through a "Living Balance Sheet."

Farmington, Conn.-InsurBanc, a federal savings bank organized in 2001 specifically to serve independent insurance agents, brokers and their clients, is focusing its efforts to offer competitive personal banking products such as checking accounts, savings accounts, certificates of deposit, retirement accounts, credit and debit cards and online banking."Now that more and more agents have placed their trust in us and realize our commitment to helping them succeed and plan for their business futures, they are also looking to us for competitive personal products," says David W. Tralka, president and CEO of InsurBanc.

Toronto - IT Governance 2006, a symposium designed to equip financial services and other organizations with the knowledge needed to identify and implement a sound IT governance framework, including the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT), will be held August 6-8 in Orlando.

Chapin, S.C. - With roots in the insurance industry, General Information Services Inc. (GIS) claims to be one of the two original providers of nationwide background investigations.

Toronto - One of the country's largest providers of health, dental, group, life, disability and long-term care benefits, Aetna Inc. has selected CiRBA's data center intelligence (DCI) solution to capture and better understand the attributes and dynamics of the company's data center assets and resources"Aetna is expanding its business through acquisition and organic growth at an accelerated rate, with revenues increasing to over $22.5 billion in 2005," says Patti Schlosser, head of server & storage services, of Aetna Information Services. "Supporting an employee base of 28,000, Aetna's business segments demand increased flexibility, performance and reliability from its IT resources. With the growth of our business, the size, diversity and complexity of our IT infrastructure have dramatically increased, requiring us to have a firm grip on the management of the technologies and processes within that environment. We view CiRBA's Data Center Intelligence (DCI) as a solution that will immediately address Aetna's configuration management and compliance reporting requirements."

Baltimore - With last year's record catastrophe losses of $58 billion still fresh in listeners' minds, AIR Worldwide President and CEO Karen Clark warns property/casualty claims professionals that they face "a 5% chance we'll have losses greater than Hurricane Katrina in 2006."In her keynote remarks at the 2006 PCS Catastrophe Conference, Clark also predicted catastrophe losses "will double about every 10 years due to increases in the numbers and values of properties at risk."

Des Moines, Iowa - Recognizing the value of saving time and money with online access to disability claim information, The Principal Financial Group is offering enhanced employer reporting capabilities for long-term and short-term disability. A new report design will give employers daily access to information such as claim status and trend data."When we started seeing a need from a few customers for this type of reporting, we realized this reporting model would benefit all of our group disability customers," says Cindy Ford, claims director, the Principal Financial Group. "Our goal is to provide employers not only with the information necessary to understand their current employee claims, but also with a trend reporting program that might help reduce claims going forward and enable employees to continue working."

Honolulu - St. Paul Travelers has released a new and enhanced dashboard for e-CARMA, the customer portal to its risk management information system.Launched at the Risk and Insurance Management Society Inc. (RIMS) conference, e-CARMA is available for demonstration. Customers can view a choice of three distinct dashboards that are available directly from e-CARMA's home page. These dashboards automatically organize and visually present actionable information (red flags), performance trends, and claim outcome and metric drill-down analysis.

San Francisco--The Phoenix Companies Inc., a Hartford, Conn.-based provider of life insurance, annuity and asset management products, is using San Francisco-based salesforce.com Inc.'s AppExchange platform to customize, create, deploy and manage a number of business critical applications.Phoenix recently sought to replace the software that managed its relationships with independent agents who sell life insurance policies. The company evaluated several leading customer relationship management (CRM) products, including vertical financial services solutions, and decided that salesforce.com's automation offered the flexibility, user-friendliness, connectivity and customization ability to meet its business needs. With AppExchange platform, Phoenix was able to build and deploy custom applications to support its life insurance division's sales, marketing, finance and human resources organizations.

Fairfield, Ohio - The Ohio Casualty Insurance Co. has launched real-time issuance of policies and endorsements for several commercial lines of business through its agency interface system, P.A.R.I.S. Express. In addition, the company has enhanced its download capabilities by offering download, through its PARIS Connect technology, for commercial auto, businessowners, workers' compensation, general liability, property, package, and its new artisan contractors preferred package to the independent agents who sell its products.In providing these enhancements to its automated systems, Ohio Casualty is aiming to deliver on its promise to its agents: "to handle it efficiently, handle it once," when it comes to overall policy processing for business policyholders.

New York - In the April 2006 online edition of Marketplace Realities and Risk Management Solutions, Willis Group Holdings describes events in the natural catastrophe (Nat Cat) segment of the property marketplace as "nothing less than tumultuous." Directly affected are "clients with assets and operations in areas exposed to the Nat Cat perils of wind, flood and earthquake and to the peril of terrorism."With the beginning of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season fast approaching, "Terms and conditions offered by insurers and reinsurers have deteriorated rapidly and precipitously." The bar has been raised "for program design and marketing strategies for programs renewing in the near term, while prompting comprehensive studies of long-term business plans and risk-funding arrangements."

Sun Prairie, Wis. - Agents across General Casualty's Midwestern and Northeastern operating territory can now quote, submit and bind business auto coverage through the company's Web site.This new capability is designed to complement the company's existing online quoting/submission systems for its commercial marketplace (BOP), contractors and workers' compensation products, making it possible to submit an entire account via the Internet.

Washington, D.C. - Microsoft Corp. has launched a technology framework for the health plan industry, called "Knowledge Driven Health Plans." The announcement came as Microsoft participated in the third annual World Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C.As health plans face mounting pressure to respond to the rising costs of healthcare, growing member and provider expectations, intense competition, regulation, and the inefficiencies of a fragmented care-delivery ecosystem, Microsoft's Knowledge Driven Health Plans solutions framework is designed to deliver a technology platform that enables seamless business transformation. Microsoft and its industry partners are working together to provide health plans with integrated solutions designed to improve collaboration and access to information, thereby empowering people to make business and healthcare decisions that are based on the best evidence available.

Newark, Calif. – A new 2006 analysis from Risk Management Solutions (RMS) reveals that a Mw7.9 earthquake on the northern section of the San Andreas Fault today would result in at least $260 billion of damages to residential and commercial exposures, of which $50 billion to $80 billion would be covered by property and workers' compensation insurers. In contrast to the 1906 event, where 80% of the losses were caused by fire, less than 15% of the estimated total insured property losses are expected to be fire-related in 2006.The study analyzes the impacts of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire based on the 2006 population and property exposures of the San Francisco Bay Area. The property and workers 'compensation losses estimated in the RMS report include residential and commercial property and contents losses, as well as direct business interruption and additional living expenses due to ground shaking. In the RMS scenario, strong ground shaking affects 19 Bay Area counties, with an estimated building inventory value of approximately $2 trillion for residential, commercial, and industrial properties.

Oakland, Calif. - Canadian-based Commonwealth Insurance Co. will use an enterprise platform and XML interface technology from EQECAT Inc., Oakland, Calif., to create an integrated catastrophe management system, the companies report. EQECAT is a provider of analysis tools and methodologies that quantify insurers' and major corporations' exposure to natural and man-made catastrophic risk.

Warwick, R.I.--InsureMyTrip.com, a worldwide on-line travel insurance aggregator, has expanded operations into Canada, providing a new resource for the Canadian travel consumer. InsureMyTrip.ca allows consumers to analyze, rate, compare and purchase travel insurance from Canada's top travel insurers, all on one site.

Mayfield Heights, Ohio - The Progressive Group of Insurance Cos.' national catastrophe response team (NCRT) stands at the ready to handle increased claims volume resulting from weather-related events including hurricanes, tornadoes, hailstorms and floods.The company has opened its first permanent catastrophe response center in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, claiming it is even better positioned to deliver 24/7 claims service when people need fast, accurate claims resolution most.

Waltham, Mass. - Effective procedures are critical to business success. That's the finding from nearly 700 U.S. business professionals recently surveyed by Information Mapping Inc. (IMI).Findings show 90% of those surveyed report that documented procedures are either 'extremely important' or 'very important' in meeting their company's objectives. The results also show, for those surveyed:

Boston - Financial institutions that make online retirement tools readily available can increase consumer retirement account participation and action. That's the conclusion of a study conducted by Compete, Inc., a market research firm, with MSN and Media Contacts.The study, titled " Consumer Adoption of Online Retirement Planning Tools," was initiated to understand how consumers use online retirement tools at leading financial sites to develop and execute their wealth accumulation strategy. It revealed that every month an average of 180,000 consumers use online retirement tools, and consumers who are aware of the availability of online retirement tools and use them, are more likely to take action, according to Mike Bailey, managing director, financial services practice, Compete Inc. "Retirement sites need to seize this opportunity to leverage tools that develop relationships with consumers who will evolve into active customers with higher value accounts."

Jersey City, N.J. - ISO has identified a six-point strategy where technology now exists for the effective management of claims through improved visibility of the claims handling process, establishing best practices and a more accurate assessment of injuries and recovery implications.Statistics from the Insurance Research Council (IRC) have shown that claims cost inflation has risen at an average of around 7% every year since 1997, with the average bodily injury claim cost rising from $4,804 in 1997 to $6,711 in 2002.