Customer service

Columbus, Ohio - Healthcare Transaction Processors Inc. (HTP), Columbus, Ohio, announced it is integrating claim overpayment protection services (COPS) into its HTP Transaction Manager suite, which serves health insurers, HMOs, TPAs, IPAs and other medical payment organizations. COPS leverages ClaimsGuard technology from Bloodhound Inc., a Research Triangle Park, N.C., software company. The enhancement will enable real-time editing of claims before they are entered into the client's claim system. Through a series of business and clinical rules and other algorithms, COPS identifies anomalies in clients' claims data, such as potential overpayments, overutilization, duplicate claims and questionable provider billing practices.

Hartford, Conn. - The Innovation Group (TIG), a UK-based provider of policy, claims and conversion technology products and services, will partner with Document Sciences (DocSci), a provider of real-time content publishing products, to automate claims reporting.

Austin - United Teacher Associates Insurance Co. (UTA) is launching an initiative to Web-enable Medicare supplement insurance enrollment as well as routine agent services. The company recently signed with Cleveland-based IdeaStar Inc. to design, develop and host a state-of-the-art Web site for UTA-appointed agents. The site is targeted for launch this Fall. The site represents UTA's first foray into online, electronic signature-based enrollments for senior health and life products. Top producing UTA agents are eager to obtain online processes as they seek to stay competitive with market forces. The vision of UTA's President Billy Hill is to automate agent enrollment, agent servicing and the Medicare supplement insurance education and enrollment process. The new Web site is expected to process several thousand Medicare supplement applications per month in a paperless fashion. Senior life enrollment and other products will be added in the future.In addition, the new capabilities will help attract other agents into UTA's fold. "Site design and architecture, creating an enjoyable yet efficient and accurate agent experience, are critical in the effort to recruit and retain agents," says Mike Wise, vice president of IdeaStar Insurance Technologies. "The seamless integration with Lifepro, UTA's back-end administration system, will complete the workflow and enable high-speed policy issuance."

For insurers, handling claims is not only costly in terms of paying for damages, it ultimately can cost them customers: A poor claims experience will motivate angry policyholders to switch carriers.Processing paper-based claims creates bottlenecks that prevent effective communication between the affiliates in the claims value chain, a condition that inflates claims cycle time and impairs customer relations. As business leaders of claims departments huddle with their information technology counterparts, automating claims to more effectively assign, manage and close claims files has become the order of the day.

A national life settlement broker is taking an eBay-like approach to the secondary life insurance market, linking cash-strapped policyholders with institutional investors.In April, Life Settlement Insights drew a handful of institutional investors online to test the open-forward auction format of a new venture called LifeX, an electronic communications network that runs on a proprietary auction platform from HedgeHog Inc. Executives with Cleveland-based Life Settlement Insights claim they've created the life settlement industry's first online exchange and are considering extending the capability to other life settlement brokerages.

When executives for MetLife Retirement & Savings were considering how to make retirement planning easier for customers to understand, Chris McCloy decided to take matters into his own hands.In late 2004, the New York-based insurer had its eye on technology developed by San Francisco-based Macro-media Inc. Using Macromedia's Breeze technology, MetLife could offer plan sponsors and their employees customizable, online multi-media presentations-supported by Flash Player and delivered in a high-impact PowerPoint presentation.

When online insurance marketplaces first appeared on the Internet horizon more than five years ago, they filled an important gap in carriers' online business strategies. At that time, most insurers had Web sites that industry experts mockingly referred to as "brochureware" to describe their informational, non-transactional qualities.Insurance marketplaces attracted the attention of consumers who were surfing the Web to comparison shop for auto, home and even life insurance. Typically frequented by young, Internet-savvy Generation Xers and baby boomers, these online insurance marketplaces provided participating carriers and independent agents with hundreds of leads from consumers who were patient enough to wade through screen after screen of questions before they received their prize: multiple quotes from brand-name insurers.

ZURICH UPDATES SURETY EXPRESSZurich North America, the Schaumburg, Ill.-based commercial property/casualty insurer, has launched Surety Express Release 2, an updated version of its free online surety bond processing system. Offering a number of key enhancements, including improved screens and time-saving features, Release 2 enables agents in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to rate, underwrite, quote, obtain and issue commercial and contract surety bonds directly from the Zurich Web site at www.zurichna.com/surety.

Hartford, Conn. - ACORD XML standards are going a long way for The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. The Hartford, Conn. carrier has harnessed the standards to provide its agents with the ability to speed up placement of midsize commercial accounts.

Andover, Mass. - State National Companies, Fort Worth, Texas, has chosen CGI Group Inc., an independent information technology and business process services company, to provide full regulatory and statistical reporting services for their property and casualty book of business. Privately held, State National Companies includes three affiliates: State National Insurance Company, National Specialty Insurance Company and Texas-based State and County Mutual Fire Insurance Company.

Brookfield, Wis. - Fiserv Customer Centered Solutions (CCS), the customer relationship management (CRM) arm of Fiserv, launched its Enterprise Relationship Management Suite (ERM Suite), an integrated product line designed to address service and sales issues facing CEOs.

Boston - John Hancock announced a new turnkey marketing program called Key Employee Excess Enhancement Plan (KEEEP) to help producers sell deferred compensation cases and maximize sales in the business market. The program enables producers to present, sell, implement, service and administer a deferred compensation plan, including business owner and employee brochures on how the plans work and their benefits, as well as a sample client presentation. The package also contains executable documents needed to implement the plan that are ready for sign-off by the plan sponsor's legal counsel, and a producer guide offering a comprehensive program overview.

San Francisco - InsureWorx Inc., a provider of modular software solutions to the insurance industry and the workers' compensation carrier market, has launched its new Web site, located at www.insureworx.com. The site introduces the look and feel of the newly formed InsureWorx organization which resulted from the January 2005 acquisition of Taliant Software by WorldGroup.The new InsureWorx Web site includes information about the company's PowerComp products, the company, and the insurance software market. Of particular interest to existing InsureWorx customers is the client services area. These pages are designed to become a primary source for customer information and communications/

Sarasota, Fla.- Kirk A. Sexton will take the reins as chief information officer of Unisource Administrators Inc., a workers' compensation third-party administrator that provides workers' compensation products, claim management, managed care and payroll services, to more than 15,000 employers in the southeastern United States.

Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. Novato, Calif., has taken a third major step in its total IT transformation by awarding IBM a ten-year $94 million contract to modernize a major portion of the property/casualty insurer's application, development and maintenance software into an On Demand infrastructure that could reduce the number of major applications by 70 percent while improving customer service. When completed, the work could save Fireman's Fund $200 million, more than double the project's actual cost.With IBM's assistance, Fireman's Fund will shift its IT operations to an Internet-based computing model known as a "service-oriented architecture" (SOA) that enables consolidation of costly, redundant applications. Under Fireman's Fund direction, IBM will sift through mission-critical applications using a unique IBM Business Consulting process called Component Business Modeling to determine which applications deliver the most value to the business and which processes can be refined, consolidated or eliminated.

The Lawson Firm, a Cleveland-based law firm providing legal services to the insurance industry, is offering a two-part paper examining the business and legal risks associated with business-process outsourcing (BPO) and the strategies used to manage those risks. The paper is in response to recent studies showing that roughly half of all insurers currently outsource one or more business processes, or are planning to do so within the next 18 months.

Insurance revenue reported to the Federal Reserve by the nation's bank holding companies grew by $7.3 billion in 2004 to $40.8 billion, 22% higher than 2003, according to an analysis by the American Bankers Insurance Association (ABIA), Washington, D.C.

Quincy, Mass.--eStudentInsurance.com, a service of the Edvisors Network announced this month a new partnership with Worldwide Insurance Services. The Edvisors Network, a multi-national education services company, teamed up with Worldwide Insurance Services, a global leader in travel insurance, to create a new insurance policy for students traveling anywhere in the world. Global Student Health plans from eStudentInsurance.com are designed specifically to benefit international and domestic students by offering optimal affordable coverage, anywhere in the world.

With industry research indicating that many individuals don't understand their annuity and life insurance needs, the responsibility falls on insurers to provide product research and needs-analysis to customers.While meeting with a financial advisor is one way to educate customers, many carriers, such as New York Life, are enhancing their Web capabilities to reach customers directly. And their efforts are being noticed.

In a move to strengthen the services it provides to sponsors of defined contribution plans such as 401(k) plans, Nationwide Financial Services Inc. in April purchased a company that provides third-party money management services to plan participants.The company, Registered Investment Advisors Services Inc. (RIA), which is based in Dallas, has been providing investment management services since June 2002 to plans that are part of Nationwide's Best of America Group Pension Series programs. Based on that experience, Nationwide executives say tighter integration with RIA Services will provide plan participants with expert advice on how to manage their retirement funds, and it will enable Nationwide to expand these services to other plans.