Digital distribution

ING has made enhancements to its online services for employer groups. The enhanced services include online reports, online documents, online evidence of insurability and online billing for self-accounting customers.

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. has introduced a new Portfolio Audit and Account Review program available to agents on the company's producer web site, FieldNet. PAAR is designed to help the company's more than 8,000 financial professionals and support staff improve their productivity and meet their clients' evolving needs.

GREENVILLE, S.C-- RBC Insurance is providing consumers the ability to acquire life insurance in as little as 15 minutes at its Web site located at www.rbcexpressterm.com.

INDIANAPOLIS--Consumers will be able to enjoy more options and flexibility to pay for health care expenses, gain more control over their health care dollars, reap tax benefits and plan for retirement as a result of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield's (Anthem) introduction of its Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).

A lot has been made about insurers' attempt to comply with federal regulations, such as The USA Patriot Act and Sarbanes-Oxley, but lost often in the shuffle are the ongoing state-level regulations with which insurers must contend.

Agents may not be fully aware of how customer service is related to customer satisfaction, according to the findings of two surveys conducted recently by The Progressive Corp. The carrier polled more than 1,100 independent agents and more than 1,800 auto policy holders who bought their policies through an independent insurance agency.

Financial services convergence, lower investment earnings, and market demand for more financial products all have combined to force insurers to develop new products more quickly. But how about getting those products to the market more quickly?That requires developing incentive plans and delivering commissions to producers to encourage them to sell your products.

In the legal profession, attorneys refer to it as the "discovery" process where a legal team embarks upon intensive fact-finding to construct its case.At Bloomington, Ill.-based State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., there's a variation of the concept that's beginning to take shape. It's all part of State Farm's attempt to optimize cross-selling opportunities within its multi-product line that spans homeowners, life, annuities and mutual funds, to name a few.

To provide customers with an "ideal buying experience" can sometimes mean practicing what you preach.That axiom is being practiced by business and information technology executives at Amica Life Insurance Co., a Lincoln, R.I.-based provider of term and universal life, annuities and structured settlement insurance products. The "Ideal Buying Experience" is Amica Life's recently launched new business selling program which focused on automating the front-end capability of the carrier's business-from electronic applications and new business submission, to paperless underwriting and automatic issue within its core administration system.

Many insurance companies have been chasing after the people who have a lot of money to invest and protect-high net-worth individuals. But the Principal Financial Group has taken a leap for "the little guy'-middle-class consumers who probably don't have enough life and disability insurance to protect their families."We were getting a steady chant from our advisors that we weren't doing enough to support them at that basic level-selling life insurance and disability protection," says Jerry Patterson, vice president of marketing for the life & health division of The Principal Financial Group.

Conventional management thinking says: Labor is expensive, and automation reduces that expense. Although in many cases this statement is true, competitive advantage in the area of customer service isn't a simple matter of replacing people with technology.

PEARL RIVER, NY--41 states are now accepting the ACORD Life Form Life Application Part 1, ACORD announced. This is a major step in a multi-year initiative and is supported by numerous life insurance companies and associations, including NAILBA and NAVA.

Independent insurance distributors in seven western states now can get accurate Safeco auto and home insurance quotes without leaving their EZLynx Web portal at www.ezlynx.com.

BOSTON--John Hancock Life Insurance Company has quadrupled the long-term care insurance (LTCI) operations professionals who support the sale of its LTCI products from 6 staff members to 24. The expanded support enhances service for its existing LTCI channels including career agents, its national account team, managing general agents (MGAs) and banks, and allows the company to serve two new channels, brokerage general agents (BGAs) and broker-dealers.

BOSTON--The American Insurance Association (AIA) is pushing Congress for a two-year extension of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), an extension that AIA says will help avoid destabilizing the insurance market and the economy, and will enable policymakers to develop a more permanent solution for managing our nation's economic exposure to catastrophic terrorism.

WELLESLEY HILLS-- Sun Life Financial announced today that its U.S. Group Insurance Division has reorganized its distribution organization into six regions, a new structure necessitated by the rapid expansion of its division and the commitment to provide local service to brokers and customers. To lead operations in these new regions, Sun Life Financial has named four new regional vice presidents (RVPs), to serve alongside two existing RVPs. All six of the RVPs report to Drew Niziak, Vice President, Distribution.

Nationwide Financial is enabling its life agents and distributors to streamline business processes using a Web-based system from NaviSys Inc., Edison, N.J. The system enables Nationwide's distributors and agents--more than 15,000 producers--to use the Web-based tools to propose universal life, variable universal life, term and whole life products to their clients.Nationwide is upgrading its illustration system and will begin using the new system by early fall. Nationwide will also implement in 2005 another component of the NaviSys suite, a Web-based electronic application that uses reflexive questioning to capture the information required for underwriting and policy issue. The application automatically accepts data from the illustration system, so representatives will need to enter customer data only once.

Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA), a Washington, D.C.-based CEO public policy and advocacy group composed of security software, hardware and service vendors to address key cyber security issues, has released its recommendations for the development of a secure electronic health care system.These recommendations are designed to support the nation's first strategic framework report on a 10-year initiative to develop electronic health records and other uses of health information technology, which was announced today by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and David J. Brailer, M.D., Ph. D., the National Health Information Technology Coordinator.

Safeco today announced strong second-quarter results, reflecting the company's solid underwriting and the competitive strength of its automated sales platform. In addition, weather-related catastrophe losses were relatively light for the second quarter. The company posted net income of $247.5 million -- or $1.77 per diluted share. This represents an increase over second-quarter 2003 net income, which was $111.9 million--or $0.81 per diluted share.

A recent poll of more than 3,000 independent agents reveals that the overall ease of doing business is a critically important factor in choosing a carrier with which to place business. The survey, conducted by Deep Customer Connections, Inc. also revealed a widening gap between agents' expectations and carriers' performance. "The gap between expectations and performance tripled on five of the 10 factors of ease of doing business," noted Paul Croke, a founding partner for the Scituate, Mass.-based consulting firm. That occurred despite the fact that the insurance industry as a whole improved fractionally on all 10 ease of doing business factors. The Web survey was sent to over 40,000 independent insurance agencies and brokerages nationwide. There were nearly 3,200 responses with more than 100 different carriers being rated. The 10 ease of doing business factors identified by Deep Customer Connections are: