Policy adminstration

It's a great time for P&C carriers to be considering a new policy administration system, as features critical to return on investment, such as customer relationship management and data mining, become relatively standard features in these systems, according to Boston-based Celent Communications. In a report released this week designed to help insurers understand the marketplace, Celent cites additional incentives: a drop in prices, faster implementations, and more plentiful vendor options.

Chicago - Companies want clean, accurate enterprise data to enhance analytics capabilities, say business and IT professionals in a recent survey conducted by Chicago-based data warehousing consultant Knightsbridge Solutions. More than 2,000 respondents among all levels of business and IT functions and industries completed the survey, entitled the "2005 BI Peer Review," this past spring.

Jupiter, Fla. - If life and health insurers maintain their chokehold on technology spending, it shouldn't be a case of pleading poverty. Just-released figures from Weiss Ratings show that profits in that sector climbed nearly 30% last year, the second consecutive year of growth.

Chicago - Brokerage giant Aon Corp. has appointed Bill Pieroni global chief information officer. Pieroni joins Aon from IBM, where he was head of that company's global insurance industry practice. He has extensive technology and industry experience, working with insurance companies and other clients on complex information and technology issues. Pieroni, whose appointment is effective Monday, June 20, will have responsibility for global Aon IT-related activities. He will be based at the firm's headquarters in Chicago.

Northbrook, Ill.-Michael J. Roche has been promoted to senior vice president of Allstate Insurance Co. with responsibility for Allstate Protection technology and administration . Allstate Protection combines the Allstate and Encompass property and casualty offerings through Allstate and independent agencies, respectively. Roche is also now a member of the Allstate senior management team.

Oakland, Calif.-A review of hurricane trends by EQECAT Inc. shows a more than a one in three chance of large hurricane catastrophe losses in the United States in the current season, based on current forecasts by the National Hurricane Center (NHC)."Although the current season might not be as severe and unusual as the 2004 season, the potential for large losses in 2005 is likely to be troubling to insurers and reinsurers, which will have to cover the potential hurricane damage claims," says Tom Larsen, senior vice president of EQECAT.

Columbus, Ohio - Healthcare Transaction Processors Inc. (HTP), Columbus, Ohio, announced it is integrating claim overpayment protection services (COPS) into its HTP Transaction Manager suite, which serves health insurers, HMOs, TPAs, IPAs and other medical payment organizations. COPS leverages ClaimsGuard technology from Bloodhound Inc., a Research Triangle Park, N.C., software company. The enhancement will enable real-time editing of claims before they are entered into the client's claim system. Through a series of business and clinical rules and other algorithms, COPS identifies anomalies in clients' claims data, such as potential overpayments, overutilization, duplicate claims and questionable provider billing practices.

Hartford, Conn. - The Innovation Group (TIG), a UK-based provider of policy, claims and conversion technology products and services, will partner with Document Sciences (DocSci), a provider of real-time content publishing products, to automate claims reporting.

Anaheim, Calif. - At the 77th Annual IASA Educational Conference and Business Show held this week in Anaheim, Calif., IASA announced a technology education initiative that will involve a vendor collaborative approach. It has joined forces InsureWorx, an Emeryville, Calif., provider of modular software, to develop and deliver a specialized insurance technology program for IASA member companies. The initiative will be launched with a series of InsureWorx-sponsored Webinars to provide in-depth presentations and discussions on critical topics currently affecting insurance company information technology departments.

Simsbury, Conn. - The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., appointed Terry Walker as senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO) for its Hartford Life Inc., subsidiary.

Southfield, Mich. - Proforma Corporation, a business process modeling and analysis software company, announced it has joined with business process management (BPM) providers to answer industry demand for interoperability between business process analysis (BPA) and BPM. The consortium agreed to support a common interchange format (CIF) that will facilitate the exchange of business process models between BPA tools, such as Proforma's ProVision BPMx, and other BPM solutions.

Zurich, Switzerland - Swiss Re is aligning its management structure to its strategic objectives, the company reported today. Focusing on profitable growth and the efficient use of capital, Swiss Re will structure itself into three separate business units to be named Client Markets, Products and Financial Services.

In part as an industry response to legislation passed this session mandating that insurers give consumers more information regarding insurance policies to help Florida residents better prepare for hurricanes, the Florida Insurance Council announced a Hurricane Central Web site (www.flains.org).

Austin , Texas - To improve its policy management business processes, Aflac is implementing a business process management (BPM) platform. The Columbus , Ga. , carrier, which insures more than 40 million people worldwide, said it plans to use TeamWorks software, from Austin, Texas-based Lombardi, to gain new insight into process performance through business activity monitoring.

Addison, Texas - Universal Conversion Technologies (UCT), an Addison, Texas provider of data analysis and conversion services, today announced that Cincinnati-based Great American Financial Resources, Inc. (GAFRI), a subsidiary of American Financial Group, completed its conversion project. The project included the conversion of 30,000 fixed annuity policies from a recent acquisition, to the PDMA LifePRO system, GAFRI's primary administration system for all lines of business. UCT provided consulting expertise for the data mapping and project management, as well as its data conversion architect conversion.

You've driven the winding road to ERP. You've navigated the bumpy journey to CRM. Now, it's time to rev up your engines for the next big technology race: the race to the newest enterprise goal: CPM.If you haven't already heard the term, it stands for corporate performance management-also known as enterprise performance management (EPM) or business performance management.

Network storage isn't an issue insurance executives spend much time thinking about. But it should be. For starters, regulatory demands, such as those spelled out in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), are putting the onus on executives to better manage their storage systems. To audit and archive data, organizations need to hold on to more data for longer periods of time, while keeping it all readily accessible to analytical applications.Moreover, as the industry moves away from paper documents, insurers are in danger of drowning in a sea of digital data. The buildup of data is making it more cumbersome to quickly retrieve data that's relevant to key business processes. And that, experts say, is why carriers need to properly manage network storage.

For insurers, handling claims is not only costly in terms of paying for damages, it ultimately can cost them customers: A poor claims experience will motivate angry policyholders to switch carriers.Processing paper-based claims creates bottlenecks that prevent effective communication between the affiliates in the claims value chain, a condition that inflates claims cycle time and impairs customer relations. As business leaders of claims departments huddle with their information technology counterparts, automating claims to more effectively assign, manage and close claims files has become the order of the day.

A national life settlement broker is taking an eBay-like approach to the secondary life insurance market, linking cash-strapped policyholders with institutional investors.In April, Life Settlement Insights drew a handful of institutional investors online to test the open-forward auction format of a new venture called LifeX, an electronic communications network that runs on a proprietary auction platform from HedgeHog Inc. Executives with Cleveland-based Life Settlement Insights claim they've created the life settlement industry's first online exchange and are considering extending the capability to other life settlement brokerages.

From the highest executive to the lowest-level associate, business people in corporate America are creatures of habit-often to a fault.Take paper processing. The reliance on paper documents might represent a drag on day-to-day workflow, but to business people accustomed to traditional processing methods, paper provides a comfort zone-inefficiencies and all.