Customer service

Boston - Electronic application submissions have grown dramatically since 2004 but still account for less than half of all new life/health business, according to a new report from Celent, a Boston-based financial research and consulting firm.

Southern California — Two major insurers are going the extra mile to help their policyholders affected by wildfires by deploying mobile response vehicles to the disaster area. Los Angeles–based Farmers Insurance Group of Cos. is helping thousands of its customers as they file claims and begin returning to their normal lives. Farmers is trying to make it as easy as possible to file a claim by continuing to offer mobile command centers and its Mobile Catastrophe Claims Bus to serve the most customers before they are allowed to return home.

Orlando, Fla., and El Segundo, Calif. - Applied Systems Client Network (ASCnet) and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) each awarded customers at their respective conferences.Chambersburg, Pa.'s Strickler Agency Inc. received the inaugural "Interface Agency of the Year Award" presented by ASCnet, the user group for Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based Applied Systems agency technology. The award was presented at the 22nd Annual Technology, Education & Networking Conference.

Wakefield, Mass. and Jersey City, N.J.– P&C policy and rating solutions provider ISO Insurance Technology Solutions (ISO-ITS) and consulting firm Edgewater Technology Inc. have entered into a strategic alliance.

Chicago–A new survey demonstrates that increased IT spending results in lower claims processing costs for P&C insurers.

Reston, Va.–Insurance regulators in eight states have granted written recognition to the straight-through processing (STP) standards initiative of NAVA, the Association for Insured Retirement Solutions.

Mayfield Village, Ohio — The Progressive Group of Insurance Cos. yesterday introduced Paperless Policies, a feature that will allow customers who buy a policy directly from the company, or through one of its independent insurance agencies, the ability to reduce the amount of policy-related paper documents they receive. Having policy documents delivered electronically saves trees, expedites delivery of the documents and reduces the opportunity for misplaced documents, says the insurer.

Seattle and Madison, Wis. — A handful of U.S. auto insurers have begun offering in-car cameras or global positioning equipment to help parents monitor their teenagers' driving behavior, hoping to reduce the number of crashes involving young motorists.

Thousand Oaks, Calif. — For small-business owners who face pressure to provide their employees with affordable health insurance, one statewide provider has devised an online solution to address the situation. Blue Cross of California has released a new tool that makes it easier for small-business owners to navigate the health care arena and find the most affordable products for their employees with the launch of an online tool called Click4Biz.

Washington – Thanks in part to technology that automates the credit-verification process within 48 hours, an unlikely contender is entering the mortgage lending business. A division of Citigroup Inc. is piloting a program to offer mortgages to Washington-area residents with "limited credit histories" who "therefore often end up with high-cost or risky home loans." Setting aside $200 million for the program, the division, CitiMortgage, has partnered with Fannie Mae, Washington, D.C. and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., Bloomington, Ill., which together agreed to buy $100 million worth of the loans. To qualify for the program, a person must be in the country legally and have alternate credit lines, such as rental payments, utility bills or a tithing record, that a lender can use to evaluate creditworthiness. Historically, gathering the paperwork to confirm these trade lines has been a laborious process that could take months, which often discouraged potential buyers and hurt their chances of closing a deal, reports The Washington Post.

WASHINGTON — The practice of insurers basing auto insurance premiums on a customer's credit rating was questioned at a House hearing yesterday, with critics asking whether it disproportionately hurts young people and minorities.

STUDY: INSURERS NEED TO CHANGEU.S. consumers want insurance companies to more effectively communicate new products and services available to them, provide customized policies to better meet their needs and bring their customer experience up to par with other industries, according to a study by Armonk, N.Y.-based International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) of more than 3,000 P&C insurance policyholders.

Remember when Johnny Carson would become Karnack the Magnificent and answer the question before he opened the envelope holding the question? Well, here is the answer: You will save time and money and improve customer service as well as compliance. The question: What will Check 21 do for me?Congress enacted Check 21, or more formally known as Check Clearing for the 21st Century, in 2004 at the behest of the Federal Reserve. Recall that when 9/11 occurred, all aircraft were grounded and could not fly. The small planes that would fly checks from various cities to Federal Reserve locations as a part of the check clearing and settlement process were not exempt. As a result, the Federal Reserve decided to implement new processing rules and utilize technology, coining this process as Remote Deposit Capture (RDC), to digitize checks and remove the physical check from the clearing process.

Chicago — Arup, a global multidisciplinary engineering and consulting firm, has joined with Chicago-based Aon Corp. in a strategic alliance that brings to the marketplace a pre- and post-loss consulting service that offers clients an independent, global catastrophic risk management solution.

New York — The Guardian Insurance & Annuity Co. Inc. (GIAC), a wholly owned subsidiary of The Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America, New York, announced today that Boston-based DALBAR Inc. has awarded the company with the DALBAR Seal of Excellence for Transaction Processing for the third year in a row. The DALBAR Seal is only awarded to those firms that consistently exceed customer expectations for service levels.

New York — Switzerland-based Zurich Financial Services Group named Kevin Dunham as senior vice president and global relationship leader for the Western region of its Global Corporate in North America business unit. Dunham is based in Glendale, Calif., and will manage accounts primarily in the Southwest and Western United States.

Jersey City, N.J. — The U.S. property/casualty insurance industry's net income after taxes rose 10.7% to $32.6 billion in first-half 2007 from $29.4 billion in first-half 2006. Fueled by the industry's net income, policyholders' surplus—insurers' net worth measured according to Statutory Accounting Principles—increased $26.5 billion to $512.8 billion at June 30, 2007, from $486.2 billion at year-end 2006.

San Francisco—Insurance customers won't tolerate difficult navigating, endless loops that prevent transactions or other Web site challenges, according to survey results released by San Francisco-based Tealeaf Technology Inc. According to the survey, conducted by Rochester, N.Y.-based Harris Interactive Inc., about nine out of 10 consumers conducting transactions online (within a number of industries) have experienced problems. This year's survey highlights online consumer intolerance, as 42% of those who have experienced problems when conducting online transactions have switched to a competitor or abandoned the transaction entirely, and another 52% who have experienced bad customer service from a company's contact center, following an online issue, have completely stopped doing business with the company.

Detroit–Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) says it plans a significant expansion of its health care electronic data interchange clearinghouse and portal.

Manchester, N.H. – Physicians in New Hampshire are being offered a variety of incentives to participate in a statewide e-prescribing program, the latest initiative by the Blue Cross Blue Shield organization designed to improve patient safety, control costs and reduce medication errors. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Citizens Health Initiative, created by Gov. John Lynch, launched a statewide electronic prescribing, or e-prescribing, program for every physician office in the Granite State, reports the insurer. This follows the announcement made in February by Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) of Illinois to expand its e-prescribing initiative throughout Illinois. In January, Anthem BCBS announced it would expand the effort in Ohio. Those efforts are ongoing. More than 3 billion prescriptions are written annually in the United States, with medication errors resulting in $77 billion in costs and 7,000 deaths per year (Institute of Medicine, 2006). Yet fewer than 22% of physicians nationwide use the basic capabilities of electronic prescribing, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS estimates that the use of such technology could eliminate as many as 2 million harmful drug events each year. Electronic prescribing pilots have demonstrated that up to 2% of all prescriptions transmitted this way are changed before being administered to the patient because e-prescribing has alerted the physician to potential safety problems. E-prescribing enables a licensed practitioner to generate a prescription electronically, and then transmit it to a pharmacy. Through this new program, Anthem is offering physicians access to free e-prescribing software, a free mobile pocket PC and a discounted wireless telecommunication plan that will enable them to access real-time patient eligibility, formulary and medication history information from any Internet-enabled PC, or anywhere a cell phone signal is available. Physicians with these tools can write and renew prescriptions anytime, anywhere, for all of their patients, not just Anthem members. “Physicians will now have ample information at their fingertips to help them ensure the safety of their patients, to work more efficiently and to save their patients money on prescriptions,” says Lisa Guertin, president, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire. Last fall, Gov. Lynch announced his goal to make New Hampshire the first state in the nation where all prescribing health care providers are able to prescribe medication electronically. “Electronic prescribing will help ensure patients get the best possible medication to meet their needs. That will reduce medical errors, save lives and reduce health care costs,” he said. “That is why, working through the Citizens Health Initiative, I’ve made electronic prescribing a priority. This effort will help us meet our goals of making New Hampshire the first state in the nation where all health care providers are able to prescribe medication electronically.” The Anthem e-prescribing program, supported by Sprint and the National E-prescribing Patient Safety Initiative, will include access to a patient’s eligibility, formu aries, adverse drug event alerts and medication history, including medications prescribed by physicians outside of the practice. Most electronic medical record (EMR) systems have e-prescribing capability, however, to date, that technology has not been widely used, and often has not supported the ePrescribing process, reports the insurer. In addition to accessing e-prescribing via EMR systems, prescribers can use smart phone/personal digital assistant devices or stand-alone, Web-based applications. “Not only is this program expected to help reduce medical errors and improve patient safety by providing drug-specific information, it also will help eliminate confusion among drug names and improve communication between physicians and pharmacists,” says Elizabeth Malko, M.D., medical director, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire. The technology also will allow physicians to send new prescriptions to the pharmacy of the patient’s choice, as well as process refill requests from those same pharmacies. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire is working with a number of organizations to implement the program, including: The New Hampshire Citizens Health Initiative National E-prescribing Patient Safety Initiative Sprint RxHub LLC, which is providing the technology infrastructure that supports the secure exchange of patient-specific prescribing information between physicians and pharmacy benefit managers, and the transmission of the electronic prescriptions to mail-order pharmacies; SureScripts, operators of the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange, which facilitates the electronic connection between community pharmacies and physicians; and Anthem’s pharmacy benefit management company, which plays a key role by helping to ensure physician access to information, including benefits, eligibility, formularies and medication history. Information about the program was mailed to all New Hampshire physicians in late August. Those who adopt the program will be provided with orientation and training from Anthem. Participating providers who enter into a two-year service agreement with Sprint also will receive a free hand-held device courtesy of Sprint (The HTC 6800 Windows Mobile Device). Sources: Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, INN news archives