Digital distribution

Amica Mutual received the top honor for overall excellence from InsuranceQuotes.com’s inaugural Insurance Quality Awards.

Potentially simpler interconnectivity and cheaper information dissemination processes could make insurers, and insureds' wallets, very happy.

For the second straight year, MetLife leads life insurers in annuity considerations through the first three quarters, ended Sept. 30, 2011. Prudential Financial and Jackson National Life Group round out the top three in the rankings released by SNL.

United Automobile Insurance Co. (UAIC), a privately held P&C insurer specializing in auto insurance, has deployed BillingCenter as its billing management system. BillingCenter is a product of Guidewire Software, a provider of core system software to P&C insurers.

While the insurance industry was an early adopter of mobile technology for basic communication functions, it has lagged in developing and implementing internal and customer-facing applications.

DST Systems Inc., a provider of information processing solutions and services to the asset management, insurance, retirement, brokerage and healthcare industries, has released DST Insurance Solutions’ InPayce payout solution.

The industry constantly hears about the problem of retiring knowledge workers and that young people aren’t drawn to insurance careers. The Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of New York (IIABNY) is doing something about it. On December 7 the association hosted more than 50 high school students who participated in InVEST, an insurance industry classroom-to-career education program.

Columbus Life Insurance, a provider of retirement, estate planning and advanced business planning services, has selected iGO e-App to automate and streamline business processes for independent producers. iGO is a product of iPipeline, a creator of marketing, selling and processing solutions for insurance carriers, distributors and producers.

COUNTRY Financial, out of Bloomington, Ill., has licensed the PolicyWriter software suite from Adaptik Corp. to serve as the heart of its next generation personal lines policy administration platform, the companies report.

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.

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.

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.

Life insurers need to craft mitigation strategies for a prolonged low-rate environment.

Commercial lines carriers focused on risk mitigation tied to business continuity have reason for additional concern. According to a newly published survey, 85 percent of companies reported at least one supply chain disruption over the last 12 months, with 40 percent of analyzed disruption originating below the immediate supplier. The survey, sponsored by Zurich Financial Services Group (Zurich) and conducted by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Caversham, United Kingdom, queried companies from across 62 countries.

Foreign insurers are meeting a wall of resistance as they try to penetrate the Chinese market, new analysis from Moody's indicates.

Sponsored by Swiss Re, a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) finds risk management practices surrounding renewable energy projects wanting.

JHPInsite.com, an insurance quote engine technology company and off-shoot of Health One Insurance Agency, found that “35 percent of website visitors clicking for information on additional products that are entirely different than what they were initially looking for." To address unpredictable shoppers, the vendor has developed a cross-sale platform enabling insurance brokers to place any product they wish into the quote engine environment for prospective clients.

Needs analyses and face-to-face contact greatly improve the odds of closing life insurance sales, according to a new study from LIMRA.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners voted to exclude broker commissions from calculations of medical loss ratio required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued its first rebuke to an insurer under the federal rate review provision of the Affordable Care Act.