Digital distribution

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.

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.

Branchville, N.J. - Selective Insurance Group Inc. announced that its principal subsidiary, Selective Insurance Company of America, made several management changes as part of its leadership development process that created new roles for existing officers.

AGENTS DEMAND REAL-TIME SERVICEIndependent insurance agencies are poised for a major service breakthrough with the proliferation of real-time transactions, says a prominent participant in the industry-wide push to double real-time transaction volume in a year.

PPS SOFTWARE SUITESkywire Software, a Frisco, Texas-based provider of software products for the insurance industry, announced the availability of a reporting tool for PPS, its policy production system for managing general agencies and wholesalers.

Silver Spring, Md. — Insurers are recognizing the savings associated with installing distributed scanning and capture technologies, according to a July 2007 survey by AIIM, who specializes in disseminating information about enterprise content management.

Worchester, Mass. - The Hanover Insurance Group Inc., a regional property/casualty company based in Worchester, Mass., is offering Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) bonds through the company’s online point-of-sale system, BONDirect. The federal government’s ERISA bonds protect employee benefit plans against losses caused by fraud and dishonesty committed by employee trustees.

Toronto-based kanetix, Canada's online insurance marketplace, compared the average lowest auto insurance premium quoted at www.kanetix.ca in Q2 2007 with the average lowest premium quoted from the same period in 2006, and found that the average lowest price had decreased by almost 17%.

El Segundo, Calif. - To remain competitive in the life and annuity industry, insurers should exploit technology to create more innovative products and introduce them faster, according to insurance industry analysts speaking at Computer Sciences Corp.’s Life and Annuity Users’ Forum.

Washington— The National Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA) is reiterating its opposition to the National Insurance Act of 2007.

In the wake of insurers increasing their efforts to utilize the Internet to broaden their accessibility, streamline efficiency and reduce time and costs, two insurers have recently ramped up their online customer service capabilities.

Richmond, Va. - Markel International Ltd., the company's London-based operation, will enter the Asian market with marine and professional liability products, the company reports. Markel Vice Chairman Steven Markel told INN that the push in Asia is in conjunction with its operations as a syndicate of Lloyd's of London.

SC BLUES WINS CALL CENTER TECH AWARDBlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C., took top honors in the "Best Use of Technology" category during the 3rd Annual Call Center Excellence Awards held recently in Las Vegas.

FEE REDUCTION FOR INSURANCE SERVICESThe Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation's (DTCC) Insurance Services New York business reports its first fee reduction in history, reflecting growing usage of its services. Insurance Services has automated linkages and data exchange between carriers and their broker/dealer, bank and other distributor partners who market insurance products.

The relationship between IT and the business within insurance companies is a subject insurance professionals will talk about until the cows come home. How do the two work together? Who are the forward thinkers? How does IT know what the business needs and vice versa? These questions plague both sides. CUNA Mutual Group, Madison, Wis., may have figured it out. In fact, this epiphany helped win the company Insurance Networking News' 2007 INNovator of the Year award for its ability to successfully combine the efforts of IT and the business to create a specialized claims processing solution, Claims Express."We're (business and IT) part of the same team," says Tom Gosnell, CIO at CUNA Mutual. "I think it's that close working relationship that helps best position us to be able to share ideas with the business and vice versa and to be able to come up with the right solution across the board."

A study of European insurance policy holders by Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc. revealed an overarching reluctance to manage their accounts online. Given many of the major carriers’ desire to drive more customers to the Internet for routine sales and service interactions, the data points to an uphill battle.

Hartford, Conn. - The economics of distribution channels in personal auto insurance can be difficult to understand, and this can present both opportunities and challenges in a softening rate market, according to a new study by Hartford, Conn.-based Conning Research & Consulting.

New Delhi and The Hague, the Netherlands - Insurers outside the U.S. are actively creating partnerships in a business affecting the banking and insurance industries.

Washington, D.C. - NAVA has struck an alliance with Atlanta-based Financial Services Institute (FSI) to automate electronic annuity sales for independent broker-dealers. The alliance is the latest in a series of actions that play into NAVA's straight-through processing (STP) initiative, a comprehensive set of standards for managing new annuity business electronically. With the goal of reducing redundancies and costs, and increasing efficiencies across the industry, the STP standards, published in December 2006, address e-signatures, e-document management and regulatory acceptance, and includes built-in compliance capabilities to help prevent unsuitable sales. NAVA and the FSI, a membership association of broker-dealers that serve registered representatives who are independent contractors, will work together to augment the STP standards and enable broad adoption among FSI members. The group comprises 110 broker-dealer member firms with more than 130,000 independent registered representatives.NAVA reports that independent brokers represent a significant and fast-growing channel for the distribution of variable annuities - FSI members account for more than 36% of all annuity sales. Mike DeGeorge, NAVA's general counsel, told INN that one of the group's goals is to have broader participation from the independent channel. "FSI gives us access to a larger group of advisers," he says. "We have similar alliances with ACORD, and we've been working with the American Council of Life Insurers." DeGeorge says that NAVA already counts 19 of the top 20 insurers on its executive council, including Allianz Life, Hartford Life, Pacific Life, Principal Financial, Prudential Financial, Transamerica Life and Wachovia Securities. Major wire houses, such as UBS and Morgan Stanley, along with 10% of the bank channel, are also involved, DeGeorge adds. NAVA is also in the process of working with other trade associations as well as federal and state regulators to secure wide-spread acceptance and approval of STP."We want to let them know what we are doing and why we are moving to electronic commerce," DeGeorge says.The group is now working on implementation guides for the standards, model consent documents, and on suitability standards that provide common interpretations of regulatory requirements.This series of actions, reports DeGeorge, is designed to encourage more brokers, advisers and representatives to sign on. "Now it's paper intensive, time-consuming process," he says. "Reps feel it's a good product, but hard to sell because of all the paper. We want to make it easier for the consumer-make it less like buying a house with all the paper-retirement planning can be made very easy with this." Source: NAVA