Claims

Des Plaines, Ill. – The nation's property and casualty insurance companies are calling for a united front in the fight against fraud after completing a two-year study that showed the industry’s efforts have been fragmented and inadequate.

New York - Insurers have made great strides in combating money laundering but many have yet to apply the power of IT to the problem, a trend some experts see as troubling.

Minneapolis - As part of the association's Executive Education Program, the Insurance Accounting & Systems Association (IASA) will present the 3rd Annual CIO Roundtable program on Tuesday, June 5. This exclusive, "by invitation only" event will feature expert educational sessions sponsored by IASA associate member companies, including: AT&T, Document Sciences, Duck Creek Technologies and OnBase Insurance Solutions by Hyland Software. Admittance to the CIO Roundtable is complimentary to any qualifying chief information officer registered to attend the 2007 IASA Annual Educational Conference & Business Show, June 3-6 in Minneapolis.

New York - Joyce A. Phillips will join American Life Insurance Company (ALICO), a subsidiary of American International Group, Inc. (AIG), as its president and chief operating officer, effective July 9. Phillips will report to AIG Executive Vice President Rodney Martin, Jr., who is ALICO chairman and chief executive officer and chief operating officer of the organization's Worldwide Life Insurance division.

Washington - Americans show a strong interest in controlling their own electronic medical records, according to a national survey released at a health IT conference.

Feeble information technology systems simply won't meet the Herculean challenges faced by workers' compensation insurance carriers. It's a lesson executives learned the hard way at Crawford & Co., an Atlanta-based third-party administrator (TPA) that handles workers' compensation claims.After identifying the need for software to help with regulatory compliance, Bob Stevens, Crawford assistant vice president of operational compliance, recruited a purchasing team. The team embarked upon the typical purchasing path-searching the Internet for software systems, gathering software information at trade shows and listening to vendor demos.

VOIP RECORDING PORTFOLIO EXPANDED BY CTI GROUP INC.CTI Group Inc., Indianapolis, a provider of VoIP call recording communications, has expanded its VoIP call recording portfolio to include SmartRecord Cards and Recording-enabled SIP Trunks.

CHUBB GOES TO SEA AS WELL AS TO WEB

Hartford, Conn. and Indianapolis - Two insurers—Travelers and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield—announced online tools for their customers. Hartford, Conn.-based Travelers announced new technology launches: Umbrella Wired and OSHA Recordkeeping, as a new component of e-CARMA.Umbrella Wired online software program is designed to simplify the rate, quote and bind process for agents who offer small commercial umbrella liability policies.

Toronto, Ontario - Pink Elephant, provider of IT management best practices, plans to launch ISO/IEC 20000 Essentials, a new course that will help organizations understand the benefits of adopting a quality approach to IT, as defined by the first global standard for IT Service Management, ISO/IEC 20000. Published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2005, ISO/IEC 20000 is directly linked to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the best practices framework that focuses on aligning IT with the business, resulting in greater productivity and reduced costs. Despite the many strategic advantages, implementing ITIL has also been met with several challenges; primarily, gaining both management and staff support for a process improvement project. "By demonstrating a commitment to quality IT service provision, organizations can gain a competitive edge through ISO/IEC 20000 registration. We're seeing more RFPs that include this standard as a prerequisite," says Pink Elephant president David Ratcliffe. "ISO/IEC 20000 also plays an important role in preparing organizations for audits. With these two benefits alone, the executive team and IT staff can make a clearer connection between ITIL and how it addresses actual business pressures and concerns." The new ISO standard also allows the organization at large to receive recognition for following ITIL best practices, whereas before only individual ITIL certification existed; therefore, ISO/IEC 20000 represents a level of excellence that can be felt across all departments and is not limited to IT or its ITIL-certified practitioners. Pink Elephant's ISO/IEC 20000 Essentials is aimed at: * IT department staff of an organization that is considering or is already ISO/IEC20000 certified, so as to understand the breadth, depth and integration between the processes; * Contracts managers looking to construct RFPs to include ISO/IEC20000; the course will help explain what is involved in the standard; * Senior IT Managers, who will understand the importance of adopting a quality approach to Service Management and understand the value of ISO/IEC20000 accreditation; * Anyone involved in service provision; this course will show how ISO/IEC20000 will enable you to transform the service provision using best practice from ITIL and ISO9000. More information about course dates and locations, and in-house deliveries, will be available soon. Please visit www.pinkelephant.com for the latest updates or call 1-888-273-7465. For more information about ISO/IEC 20000, please visit www.iso.org. Source: Pink Elephant

Schaumburg, Ill. - Zurich announced the debut of eZ Transition, an online tool that bolsters the effectiveness of Zurich's return to work (RTW) program and supports a wide range of employers' RTW practices. According to a company statement, employers can use eZ Transition to generate customized RTW policies and procedures, create job description profiles with physical job demands, develop temporary transitional work assignments, develop RTW implementation and training materials, and access Americans With Disabilities Act information and state-specific Family and Medical Leave Act data. "Effective RTW programs like Zurich's can save 10-40% of workers' compensation medical costs and 14-25% of wage replacement costs," said John Kelm, President, Zurich Corporate Customer, North America. "With disability costs projected to increase 37% this decade due to the growing number of workers aged 45 to 64, an effective RTW program and tools like eZ Transition are now more important than ever to a company's bottom line. " The tool's design reflects the input from Zurich specialists in many facets of its operations, including claims, managed care, risk engineering and underwriting. It enables the creation of a customer-specific RTW profile and the implementation of preventative loss controls that will help reduce lost workday cases. The eZ Transition tool is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to Zurich's workers' compensation customers through www.zurichna.com. Armand Fernandez, Risk Engineering Field Operations executive for Zurich, added that eZ Transition is flexible enough to adapt to employers of all sizes and program complexity, and complements Zurich's Absence Management consulting services. "Smaller employers are often unprepared for workers' compensation claims and even larger employers, with established RTW programs, frequently need assistance with physical job demands and transitional work assignments," Fernandez said. "Zurich's overall RTW program adapts to employers of all sizes, and provides the tools and directions they need to develop a comprehensive RTW solution for their specific needs, helping return their operations to normal as soon as possible." Source: Zurich, Schaumburg, Ill.

Chicago - Multinational corporations are facing increasingly diverse, complex and exotic risks, and may not have all the resources in place to manage them effectively, according to a global risk management survey conducted by Aon, a Chicago provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, human capital and management consulting, and specialty insurance underwriting. More than half of the survey's respondents said they weren't prepared for the risk they rated as most worrisome -- damage to reputation. "Executives now see reputation as a major source of competitive advantage," said Ruth Joplin, Aon Global Risk Consulting managing director. "While intangible, reputation is one of the most important corporate assets and one of the hardest to protect," she added. "The lack of preparedness reported for this and other key risks is both surprising and somewhat worrying." Joplin says it should come as no surprise that business interruption was cited as the second key risk. "Preserving earnings power is clearly one of the top priorities of senior management," she said, "and there is a growing realization that the resulting loss of income following an event could pose a greater threat than the physical damage itself. While 70% of respondents reported being prepared, it is perhaps even more telling that 30% are not." Survey responses suggest that third party liability risk concerns have arisen as a result of the encroachment of U.S.-style litigiousness into other geographies. "The 'compensation culture' is gaining a stronger global foothold," Joplin said. Rounding out the top five risk concerns, based on the survey's results, is distribution or supply chain failure, and market environment. Lack of preparedness for these risks is reported at 37% and 65%, respectively. What does this mean? "There is clearly more work to be done," said Joplin. "Dealing with these and future risk trends will require innovative, forward-looking solutions." Other top ten risk concerns rated by survey respondents are, in order, regulatory changes, failure to attract or retain staff, financial risk, physical damage and mergers and acquisitions and disaster recovery plan failure are tied for tenth place. Ranking Risk/description 1 - Damage to reputation 2 - Business interruption 3 - Third party liability 4 - Distribution or supply chain failure 5 - Market environment 6 - Regulatory/legislative changes 7 - Failure to attract or retain staff 8 - Market risk (financial) 9 - Physical damage 10 - Merger/acquisition/restructing 11 - Failure of disaster recovery plan Joplin says that that Americas is the only region where technology failure and loss of data are cited as a major risk concern, while Europe uniquely cites mergers/acquisitions/restructuring and Asia/Pacific is highly concerned with weather/natural disasters. Risk managers in the Americas tend to rely heavily on senior management intuition and experience to identify major risks as compared to other regions that rely more on business unit registers. The survey also indicates that corporate boards recognize the criticality of risk management and are engaged in the review of risk issues. Respondents reported identifying and understanding their risks is a top priority and many planned to take a more enterprise-wide approach to risk within the next two years. "By taking a more integrated, systematic approach to managing risk," Joplin said, "organizations can begin to actively start turning risk into opportunity." Aon's Global Risk Management Survey 2007 was conducted in late 2006 and early 2007 by Aon Global Risk Consulting, and is based on responses from 320 organizations in 29 countries. The Web-based survey, aimed at risk managers, CFOs, treasurers and others responsible for risk, addressed both qualitative and quantitative risk issues. Insight is provided by region, revenue and industry. Source: AON Corp.

Pearl River, N.Y. - China Life Insurance Co. Ltd. became the first Chinese domestic insurance company to join the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD) as a member.ACORD members participate directly with their peers and partners in the standards process regarding development, maintenance and management of ACORD standards. Members participate in working groups and committees, which manage and develop, and then vote on new standards specifications and maintenance requests to support both international and local business requirements.

Charlottesville, Va. - SNL Financial LC, a Charlottesville, Va.-based business intelligence provider, reached an agreement with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), Kansas City, Mo., to acquire and publish statutory insurance data through SNL's database products.Statutory insurance data consists of detailed financial and operating data filed quarterly for more than 5,000 public and private insurance companies, including: line-of-business results, market share and geographic exposure, relevant calculated ratios, investment portfolio statistics, loss triangles, reinsurance relationships and more.

Indianapolis and Washington - During the past few months, legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to repeal or alter the existing limited antitrust exemptions afforded under the McCarran-Ferguson Act.Many associations and organizations have publicly opposed the repeal. Among those are the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) and the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA).

Stamford, Conn. - Public and private companies—more than 66% of respondents—have received a record number of inquiries from potential board members who are concerned about their current directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance, an increase of 16% from 2005, according to the D&O Liability 2006 Survey on Insurance Purchasing and Claims Trends conducted by Towers Perrin. Nonprofit respondents received similar D&O inquiries from approximately 32% of their boards, up slightly (3%) from 2005.At the same time, the survey, which included 2,875 participants, shows that companies are responding to these inquiries by providing broader personal liability protection for directors and officers. In fact, 14% of those surveyed purchased Side A-only coverage in the past year. Side-A coverage provides D&O coverage for personal liability when they are not indemnified by the organization.

Hartford, Conn. - With the recent sale of a small business policy to Creative Music Adventures of Seattle, Wash., The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. now maintains one million small-business policies in force across the country."This is an outstanding achievement for The Hartford," says Jim Ruel, senior vice president of small business insurance at The Hartford. "For years, we've been listening to what small business owners want, and then developing the right products and services to help our agents meet their clients' needs. Reaching this milestone in such a competitive market is a testament to our company's leadership and expertise in this field. As the number of small businesses in this country continues to increase, The Hartford will continue to find new ways to serve them."

Reston, Va. - The year 2006 represented the tipping point for using the Internet to buy auto insurance, says comScore, Inc., a Reston, Va., company that measures commerce in the digital world.

Criminals can imitate public or private Wi-Fi services to lure unsuspecting consumers and businesses into an ID theft nightmare, says TraceSecurity, a Baton Rouge, La., provider of security compliance management.

Atlanta - A disk containing the personal information of 2.9 million Georgia residents has gone missing, state health officials say.