Customer service

Hartford, Conn. - A new, automated system introduced by The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. significantly hastens the creation and modification of personal lines insurance policies.

Seattle – Teenagers may liken Teensurance to George Orwell's all-knowing “big brother.” But Safeco is hedging its bets that parents will appreciate its new technology and services designed to help protect their teen drivers as they gain experience behind the wheel, and drive competitive advantage in the process. Safeco released its Teensurance product, which employs a set of online tools based on an on-board GPS and notification technology called the Safety Beacon. This new bundle of tools enables families to take proactive steps to monitor their teen’s behavior behind the wheel. Parents can set speed, distance and curfew limitations. A real-time notification service tells parents when their teen drivers are in danger. Teensurance is available to customers with Safeco auto insurance policies, and includes free installation of the Safety Beacon, which is guaranteed for two years. Safeco’s goal with Teensurance is to keep communications open about driving and the responsibilities that come with having a driver’s license. “Teensurance is a proactive solution to help our customers keep their families safe on the road, and the first in a series of Safeco innovations that push beyond traditional insurance to impact our customers on a broad scale,” said Jim Havens, vice president of consumer solutions at Safeco. The Teensurance program’s set of tools includes set “safe driving” zones to gradually ease new drivers into the driving experience; the ability to unlock a car door remotely using a simple code; access to 24/7 roadside assistance, a parent/teen contract and pertinent educational materials, including a “TeenDash” survey. Source: Safeco

New York – Aiming to capitalize on the record pace of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), Zurich has created a new business unit designed to cater to the companies involved. The unit, part of Zurich's global corporate business division, will offer customized products and services to help companies manage M&A transaction-related risks, the company says.

Las Vegas - A feature on its Web sites that links directly to a physician's office has garnered an award for BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina. The feature, called STATchat, took top honors in the "Best Use of Technology" category during the 3rd Annual Call Center Excellence Awards held recently in Las Vegas. STATchat allows a physician's office staff to call BlueCross over the Internet and gives them priority for customer service. Physician office staff members simply click on the STATchat icon to call for assistance without dialing any numbers by using an inexpensive headset with microphone. STATchat links the staff member with a BlueCross provider services agent, ahead of calls from physician offices using traditional phone lines. Both the awards and the conference are organized by the International Quality & Productivity Center (IQPC). Experts and practitioners in the call center field judged this year's award entries. "Providers who utilize our STATchat feature receive the help they need with little or no wait time," said David Boucher, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina's assistant vice president of health care services. "This allows our providers to better focus on their vital role of caring for their patients." Headquartered in Columbia, S.C., BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Source: PR Newswire

Oakland, Calif. - Web-based options are playing a larger role in doctor-patient interaction, notes Kaiser Permanente. The Oakland, Calif., health insurer released a study that was published in the American Journal of Managed Care and describes how secure e-mail changes the way patients choose to access medical care. "Patient access to electronic health record with secure messaging: impact on primary care utilization" examines the use of secure e-mail between Kaiser Permanente members and physicians. According to the study: Patients with online access to an electronic health record (EHR) are choosing to use secure e-mail, thereby decreasing the number of primary care office visits and telephone contact rates. The study noted that the use of secure e-mail linked to an EHR decreased annual adult primary care outpatient visit rates by 7 to 10% and led to 14% fewer phone contacts than those not using online services. "The access to personal health management tools, including secure email is helping our members get care how and when they want it," states Yvonne Zhou, PhD, one of the authors of the study. "It is valuable to have been able to document an evolving trend that shows consumers are choosing to replace office visits and phone calls with electronic communication with their doctors." More than 1.4 million Kaiser Permanente members are registered to use the company's secure online services. Since launching secure e-mail services, more than 2.7 million e-mail messages have been sent to providers. Source: PR Newswire

CIGNA HealthCare, Hartford, Conn., announced yesterday that it will begin providing online precertification this fall to more than 365,000 physicians in its national network.

A former insurance agent from Penn Valley, Calif., was convicted of one felony count of insurance fraud and three misdemeanor counts of petty theft for collecting insurance premiums from clients for commercial general liability and commercial automobile insurance and failed to remit the premiums to insurers. A former Allstate insurance agent was charged with a single count of theft, a Class D felony, after an investigation revealed that he had accepted and deposited his clients' checks without applying the funds toward their policies. A Louisiana-based agent was arrested, transported to jail and booked on four counts of insurance fraud and one count of forgery for altering insurance applications to increase the previously agreed upon premium amount, thereby increasing his commission. In one instance, he forged the client's initials to changes without the client's knowledge or consent.All three of these stories graced the news within a week-and-a-half, and are just a few that have recently made headlines. Independent agents seem to be finding more ways to commit fraud and practice unethical business--creating false insurance entities, fraud rings, misinterpreting policies and just flat--out stealing policyholders' money.

Identity theft, long the bane of IT departments, is also providing insurance companies with opportunities to offer a new kind of coverage and score some marketing points at the same time.Carriers are hiring third-party services to restore policyholders' stolen identities. In general, here's how it works: The victim calls the insurer to report the ID theft. After establishing the validity of the claim, the carrier transfers the caller to the vendor's call center. The third-party vendor swings into action, drawing upon relationships with credit rating agencies and other institutions to refurbish the victim's credit. Meanwhile, the insurer can track the case until closure.

BANKS SHOULD SET SIGHTS ON RELATIONSTo entice customers to buy more financial products and services, financial services companies need to focus on improving their relationship strategies, according to Gartner Inc., a research firm headquartered in Stamford, Conn.

ISTREAM TO INCLUDE NEW FUNCTIONALITYWhitehill Technologies Inc., Moncton, New Brunswick, announced new functionality in the IStream document automation suite, including IStream Publisher and IStream Document Manager. The IStream suite is designed to enable business users to create 'model documents' that control the language, layout and look of complex files, such as policies and contracts. IStream can be used to create and control virtually any kind of insurance document, from contracts to welcome kits to group booklets. New functionality includes add-ins for Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader, letting users create complex documents in a familiar, easy-to-use, interactive environment. As data or standard wordings change, users can automatically update their documents to reflect those changes. Leveraging industry-standard applications gives insurers the power to create and update documents easily as part of their normal processes.

The founders of Boston-based Homesite Insurance Group came together nearly a decade ago to create a progressive homeowners insurance company. In the quest to make their dream real, they got some help from software that links risk to geography.Today, Homesite sells in 43 states, and its underwriters evaluate the risk associated with each potential policyholder's address, says one of the founders, Manuel Rios, who now serves as Homesite vice president and chief underwriter. They do it with GeoStan geocoding technology from Group 1 Software Inc., a Pitney Bowes Co. in Lanham, Md.

An accident or catastrophe brings the moment of truth between a carrier and a policyholder. All too often, it's the only interaction between the two parties. The result is a relationship vulnerable to unwanted surprises.For example, a policyholder suffering a loss because of a fire may find a policy failed to cover enough of the current value of the property to make it whole again. Years of appreciation as well room additions and remodeling may not have been updated in the policy.

XL GLOBAL TO USE INTERCEPT TO MANAGE PROCESSESStamford, Conn.-based XL Global Services Inc., a part of the XL Capital Ltd. group of companies, will use Intercept Studio, a flagship product from Baltimore-based AVIcode, to manage business processes worldwide.

Ipswich, Mass. - When it comes to the larger issues of Web site usability, communication and trust, Progressive and GEICO lead the way, according to consumers answering a survey for the Customer Respect Group (CRG), an international research and consulting firm that focuses on how corporations treat their online customers. This marks the fourth study in a row in which Progressive is ranked at the top. The Ipswich, Mass., firm released findings from its second quarter 2007 Online Customer Respect Study of the Automobile Insurance Industry. The study evaluated the Web sites of a representative sample of auto insurance companies. Using a common set of criteria, it analyzed corporate performance from an online customer's perspective. A directly comparable customer respect index (CRI) is provided for each company. The CRI is a qualitative and quantitative in-depth analysis and independent measure of a customer's experience when interacting via the Internet, reports CRG. Comprising six sub-indices that factor into three meta-concepts identified by customers as their critical concerns when using Web sites, the CRI includes: * Site Usability - How usable is the site to a wide range of users? This includes simplicity (ease of use) and attitude (accessibility). * Communication - How willing is the company to engage in a one-on-one communication to answer specific questions? This includes responsiveness (quality of e-mail replies - both speed and helpfulness -- response tone and other communication methods). * Trust - Can this site be trusted with your personal data? This includes transparency (clarity and comprehensiveness of privacy policies), Principles (respect for data privacy, cookie explanations) and privacy (respect for data privacy, clarity and comprehensiveness of privacy policies). The average rating for the industry was 5.4 on the 10-point CRI scale. This score represents an improvement since the last report, notes CRG, primarily in the area of privacy policy transparency and responsiveness to e-mails. As a result, auto insurers have moved up to the mid-range of all industries from the bottom quartile previously. The industry provides better and more concise information about policies and practices. GEICO and Progressive tied to lead the table, marking the fourth study in a row in which Progressive came out on top. GEICO showed improvement from its fourth place spot in the previous evaluation. American Family showed the most improvement overall from the previous study.

San Francisco - Mergers and acquisitions have become the norm in the insurance industry, and two recent acquisitions prove this. More than a month after Boston-based Liberty Mutual Group announced its acquisition of Fairfield, Ohio-based Ohio Casualty Corp. for $44 per share in cash, Wells Fargo Insurance Services Inc., a subsidiary of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., announces it will acquire Universal Insurance Services Inc., Grand Rapids, Mich. The acquisition is expected to close July 1, 2007, according to Wells Fargo.

Washington - On-the-go consumers prefer to handle an increasing number of transactions themselves through self-service devices, and are more likely to do business with companies that make it easier to for them to do so, according to a new study conducted by BuzzBack Market Research for Dayton, Ohio-based NCR Corp. One exception though, according to the study, is insurance customers.

Thousand Oaks, Calif. - Blue Cross of California (BCC) introduces an enhanced Dental Blue Cost Estimator, an online tool designed to enable BCC's Dental Blue members to estimate their out-of-pocket expenses for common procedures such as cleanings, fillings and periodontal treatment. Members can access the Dental Blue Cost Estimator, through the recently launched Treatment Cost Advisor tool, to view estimated out-of-pocket costs by zip code.

Los Angeles - Farmers Insurance Group of Companies opened its second ServicePoint operation. The new call center is based in Austin, Texas and is dedicated to providing service and care to Farmers agents and their customers. The other center is in Olathe, Kansas.

Minneapolis - Unitrin Direct a Chicago supplier of direct-to-consumer automobile insurance and its business partner, State College, Pa.-based Optical Image Technology, Inc., have received the Insurance Accounting and Systems Association's (IASA) 2007 Tech Award, the companies announced. This award was presented during the IASA 2007 Educational Conference and Business Show this week.Ian Zimmerman, Unitrin Direct’s director of underwriting, and OIT’s vice president of sales and marketing, James Thumma, were on hand to accept the award during IASA’s annual business luncheon. Unitrin Direct was looking to support its overall goal of becoming a leading direct auto insurer by scaling processes and optimizing support functions. The joint project between OIT and Unitrin Direct was to implement an enterprise-wide digital organization of their corporate information and to re-engineer their business processes by using workflow to horizontally align disparate silos of information stored within a variety of departments. Unitrin Direct is now equipped to push documents through automated workflows for approvals, signatures, customized letters, and calls as well as implement business processes that will automatically direct actions that need to take place. In addition, multiple technologies and departments such as underwriting, claims, and customer service were connected in order to process more work faster, with fewer human resources. Unitrin implemented Optical Image's DocFinity Workflow product to connect the company's policy administration system, and third-party applications, including their automated call system and capture, indexing, and barcode reading along with other DocFinity components such as an electronic repository. The technology, which includes over 24 separate automated workflows, is expected to continue to enhance Unitrin Direct’s position in a highly competitive insurance market as well as put them in a strong position for future growth, said the companies. Source: Optical Image Technology Inc.

New York - The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America introduced a debit card and Web tools as part of its FlexPlan Flexible Spending Account program, which enables clients to access and manage FSA accounts easily.Guardian's FlexPlan offers employees point of service access to money they set aside in their FSA, minimizing steps of substantiating claims with receipts and waiting for FSA reimbursements via mail. Clients can pay for co-payments, deductibles, prescriptions, eyeglasses and other eligible healthcare expenses with just one swipe of a Benny Pre-paid MasterCard card.