Claims

Warren, N.J. - With businesses of all sizes looking to buy and sell overseas, the Chubb Group of Insurance Cos., Warren, N.J., released an ocean cargo policy and launched CargoPort, an online system that enables customers to view their policies, submit claims and monitor shipping activities.

New York - Insurers are taking enterprise risk management (ERM) seriously, but many companies have begun ERM programs without taking the necessary step of getting management consensus on risk appetite.

Washington - Insurers are urging Congress to preserve a federal anti-trust exemption granted to the industry in 1945. The exemption has come under scrutiny by legislators in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, insurance trade associations say.

Chicago - The fortunes of two industries are beginning to intertwine, according to Cards & Payments, a Chicago-based sister publication of Insurance Networking News.

DIRECT MARKETING TOOL ENHANCEDMelissa Data announced the addition of multi-platform capabilities to the Canadian Address Object, a complementary product to the Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif. company's Data Quality Suite, a direct-marketing tool that verifies and corrects address, phone and contact data.

STRATEGIC GOALS GUIDE IT SPENDINGSenior insurance IT executives are making strategic investments, but budgets and staff size are generally flat or growing only modestly.

INSURER AUTOMATES INTERNAL CONTROLSPhysicians Mutual, based in Omaha, Neb., selected OpenPages FCM for its financial controls management initiatives. OpenPages FCM is an enterprise financial controls management solution designed to reduce time and resource costs associated with ongoing financial reporting regulations. It is expected to reduce Physician Mutual's time and costs associated with efforts to comply with changes to National Association of Insurance Companies financial reporting regulations. "OpenPages allows us to automate our ongoing assessment and monitoring of internal controls and ensure that compliance initiatives align with our business strategy," says Barbara Bergmeier, senior vice president of internal audit, Physicians Mutual.

Kansas City, Mo. - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) Property and Casualty Insurance (C) Committee's Catastrophe Insurance Working Group will evaluate modeling for multi-state funding of catastrophes such as hurricanes or earthquakes, reports NAIC. The agreement came out of a meeting to discuss catastrophe preparedness and the potential development of a multi-state catastrophe fund.

New York - Look for accelerated growth this year of the outsourcing trends that predominated in 2006: Expansion of business process outsourcing (BPO), the maturing of the offshore market and more multi-sourcing at the expense of single, one-off “mega-deals.”

San Diego - New York, California, Nevada and Arizona have the highest rates of identity fraud, according to research from San Diego-based ID Analytics Inc. The analytical research—based on actual and attempted frauds rather than consumer victim reports—also shows that the highest metropolitan area rates of identity fraud are in New York, while the states with the lowest rates of identity fraud are Wyoming, Vermont and Montana.

Washington - "The considerable size and cost of catastrophes present unique challenges to participants in the insurance market. Namely, it makes management of potential liability by any single insurance company nearly impossible. In some cases, even the assets of the entire insurance industry are inadequate to reduce potential liability to commercially acceptable level." This statement comes from "An Analysis of Catastrophic Risk Insurance Proposals," a report published by The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers, produced by Georgetown Economic Services LLC and financed by the Foundation for Agency Management Excellence (FAME)—all based in Washington. The report analyzes the various legislative proposals have been advanced to deal with the problem of insuring catastrophic risk, from natural disasters to acts of terrorism.

Despite dire warnings from health officials and risk experts, only a tiny percentage of the nation's insurance carriers have developed formal plans to keep their businesses running in the face of a deadly, long-term influenza pandemic.While 82% of carriers have prepared business continuity plans (BCP) for survival in the wake of natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, only 11% are ready for a pandemic, says Clare DeNicola, president and CEO of IVANS, a Stamford, Conn., company that provides communications services to insurance companies. IVANS surveyed CIOs and directors in May 2006.

ITIL, the IT Infrastructure Library, entered the North American consciousness just in time to help shift the focus from putting technology first to putting business first. It's a change that amounts to a seismic jolt to the culture of insurance company IT departments.The 30-odd volumes of ITIL, which are slated for an update next month, provide a common language for IT staffs and a framework for honing IT processes. For most insurers on these shores, the idea of ITIL gained significant momentum in 2004 and reached critical mass in 2005, IT people say.

There has been no end of bad press for the property and casualty insurance industry this month. Allegations of price gouging, faulty catastrophe models and calls for a congressional probe into post-Katrina hurricane claims flooded the news wires.Most of the negative press pointed a finger at an odd coincidence. First, the year after more than 993,000 homeowners' insurance claims were settled in the two states most affected by Katrina and, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association, Des Plaines, Ill., the insurance industry paid $51+ billion in overall catastrophe-related claims. Then, the industry experienced a relatively catastrophe-quiet-and profitable-year.

Forget the stereotypes--ASP isn't just for small, IT-challenged carriers any more, and many of the ASP problems that gave insurance companies pause only a few years ago are being solved. Dollar savings and fast time to market are still big pluses for ASP, but today there are a lot of other reasons to consider it.The market among insurance carriers for ASPs, or application service providers, is growing by about 10% a year-slower than in most other industries-according to Marc Cecere, vice president and principal analyst for Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. From a supply-side perspective, that's partly because of the structure of the insurance industry and partly because of the regulatory scene for insurance companies.

MODELS UNVEILED FOR NATIONWIDE HEALTH NETWORKPrototypes for a standards-based nationwide health information network (NHIN) were scheduled for presentation at a conference last month in Washington, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

ADOBE EXPANDS ACROBATAdobe Systems Inc., San Jose, Calif., introduced Adobe Acrobat Connect software, a Web conference and collaboration product with "always-on" personal meeting rooms. It is designed to enable workers to connect online instantly with a Web browser and the ubiquitous Flash Player software. Together with Adobe Acrobat 8 software the expanded Acrobat family accelerates the flow of business by allowing people to work together in real-time, according to Adobe. The new, extended Acrobat family brings together the two critical components of knowledge work-documents and people. Acrobat Connect enables users to choose a Web address for their online personal meeting room, with unlimited use for up to 15 participants for one monthly fee.

Not many adjusters would argue against technology as a means of easing their workload-certainly not the adjusters at Farmers Mutual of Nebraska. After all, the company's claims estimating system was efficiently processing information at the desktop. But that apparent blessing was actually part of the problem: the system processed data at the desktop and not in the field, where much of the real work takes place."Our adjusters would go out in the field and inspect the loss, noting the damage just on a piece of paper," says Jamie Fredrickson, director of Field Services. "Then they would go back to their district offices, sit down at their computers and manually re-enter all of this information to generate their estimates."

CANAL SELECTS TRUMBULL FOR SUBROGATION MGT.Canal Insurance Co., Greenville, S.C., entered an agreement with Trumbull Services, Windsor, Conn., to use Trumbull's Subrooutsource, an internally developed, advanced system designed to enhance subrogation recovery activities for all lines of business nationwide. Trumbull, in conjunction with an experienced subrogation team, will manage the entire subrogation process, leveraging the system's abilities to increase recoveries through effective resource allocation, automated workflows and a continuous improvement model.

New York - European and Asian life insurers are outpacing their North American counterparts at streamlining and centralizing their policy administration systems--the core systems that support and deliver insurance products for their customers, according to a global survey of more than 100 insurance technology professionals, which was commissioned by Bermuda-based Accenture.