Claims

A committee of 11 insurer CIOs has selected nominees for the second-annual Novarica Research Council Impact Awards. Nominees include: AIG, Aegis, Erie Family Life, Great American, Nevada General, PURE, RLI and XL.

Dana Lenahan comes to the insurer with 12 years of corporate litigation experience.

IBM says software should enable the insurer to turn social media into an actionable communications channel.

High losses come despite a dramatic decrease in the number of tornadoes last month.

ViewPoint and Claim Canvas are cloud-based apps designed to be implemented within days by insurers with Guidewire software.

eSignature integration is intended to facilitate interactive claims correspondence and on-demand policy issuance applications.

According to Sapiens, the product is designed to enable carriers to build, maintain and leverage a centralized repository of reusable business rules and logic, which is designed to provide a single source for enhanced business decision making, easier compliance, better governance and improved efficiencies.

Exigen Insurance Solutions has released Exigen Pre-Configured Solution Packages, which, the company said offers more than 80 percent of core systems functionality required by P&C insurers. It uses the configuration capabilities of the Exigen Suite multi-line platform for policy administration, billing and claims management to reduce the technology and business risks associated with core systems replacement. Exigen said Pre-Configured Solution Packages can cut implementation times by half and save as much as 40 percent in average costs.

INN developed the ranking in partnership with Celent, an independent business research and advisory service with a specialization in insurance technology. Celent facilitated survey development, data collection and analysis. The result is an insightful set of rankings based on objective peer review.

Eighty-three percent of P&C insurers indicate that they will increase their spending over the next three years. The top three areas for investments in analytics, according to SMA’s data, “remain the risk-centric areas” of product development, underwriting and claims.

Sandy resulted in approximately 1.5 million claims overall, 92 percent of which were completed at four months.

The average year-over-year increase in insurers’ 2013 IT budgets was 6.3 percent; policy admin, underwriting and two other areas consume just over half of total new project resources, according to a recent survey of 24 CIOs.

The proportion of life insurers now offering e-signatures in their dealings with customers or agents has increased to 74 percent from 47 percent over the past five years, according to “Have E-Signatures Finally Arrived? An Update for Life Insurers,” from Celent, a research and advisory firm.

Growing staffs and catastrophe claims are not the main reasons costs are rising. Instead, severity is canceling out the efficiencies technology is creating, according to an analyst at this week's CEB TowerGroup Financial Services Technology Conference.

Strategic planning for clients and a review of outstanding claims included in the services.

New York and New Jersey accounted for more than half the claims in the wake of the superstorm; nearly all have been settled.

In terms of insured claims payouts, the fertilizer factory explosion likely will generate even larger dollar claims than the Boston bombings.

Satisfaction with the auto claims experience declined in early 2013, as claimants noted an increase in repair costs, according to the J.D. Power and Associates “2013 Auto Claims Satisfaction Study—Wave 2.”

Robust claims management and business continuity plans are crucial to success, as is understanding the requirements likely to be placed on mutual by reinsurers.

John Kinney, who has been with the insurer for 10 years, will lead P&C, group benefits claims operations.