Policy adminstration

Torus, a specialty insurer, and Starr Underwriting Agents Ltd. have entered into an agreement whereby Torus Syndicate 2243 will acquire the renewal rights to CV Starr Syndicate 1919’s continental European marine, casualty and financial lines, and general property business, effective Jan. 1, 2012. Both Torus Syndicate 2243 and CV Starr Syndicate 1919 are managed by Starr Managing Agents Ltd.

10 years after the original call for agile business philosophies, where are insurers prevailing and what do they have yet to learn?

The soft pricing that has defined the property/casualty market for years may finally be ebbing.

Philadelphia Financial Group Inc. announced will pay $117.5 million for all of the assets of Hartford Life Private Placement LLC (HLPP) from The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has published a final rule, with a comment period, establishing health insurers' "medical loss ratios," including provisions to account for ICD-10 conversion costs.

Having suffered five of the top ten deadliest natural disasters in history, with recent events affecting over 70 percent of its land area and more than half its population, China presents ongoing challenges to the insurance market. According to a new market report released by Aon Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary of Aon Corp., these and other challenges are complex and amplified by the scale of the market and the speed of its development.

Aspen U.S. Insurance has entered the recreational marine insurance market, with a focus on marinas, yacht clubs, boat dealers, boat manufacturers and boat component manufacturers.

Micro Focus, a provider of enterprise application modernization testing and management solutions, released Micro Focus Server Enterprise Edition for PL/I. The edition is the first complete, cross-platform migration solution that enables mainframe PL/I applications to be moved, with minimal changes, from an IBM mainframe to Linux, Unix or Windows Server platforms, where they can be operated for a fraction of the cost.

CGI Federal Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Canada-based CGI Group, announced that it has been awarded a $93.7 million contract by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) to build the U.S. government’s federal health insurance exchange.

Property/casualty insurers may well be relieved that the 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season officially ended this week. This year, the season counted 19 tropical storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes (Category 3 or above on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) resulting in insurance claims.

Mobile devices and network capabilities will lead growth areas in IT and information management in 2012, with cloud services adoption and enablement not far behind, according to IDC’s annual market predictions.

AXIS Capital Holdings Ltd.’s insurance segment named John Van Decker EVP and head of North American professional lines.

With a bearish market persisting, IT is expected to deliver miracles without the luxury of economic hardship as an excuse.

FirstBest Systems Inc., a provider of insurance software solutions for insurance carriers, has upgraded its FirstBest Front Office Suite’s underwriting workstation, agent portal and upload applications. The applications now enable account-based underwriting for multi-line insurers and mono-line insurers selling multiple policies for a single risk.

A survey of 120 U.S. P&C insurers finds them increasingly leveraging social media platforms for business purposes. Conducted by IVANS, an electronic communications services provider, the study notes that return on investment for social media initiatives can be difficult to measure and says that carriers must work with their distribution partners to ensure a cohesive strategy.

Today's high national unemployment rate is misleading and irrelevant. The insurance industry is being drained of talent and experience—a trend that's going to impact the industry and its customers for years to come—and could soon be short-staffed.

Despite the hype around new areas like mobile, social media, and cloud, the story of insurer IT budgets and projects for 2012 is one of continuity. Insurers are investing, through replacements and enhancements, in delivering the business capabilities needed to support growth, achieve competitive parity and improve operational effectiveness. But most insurers still think of IT as a self-contained area. And few have truly integrated it into operational planning in the way that companies will need to as the broad changes in information technology sweeping through the economy start to drive change in the basic assumptions of the insurance industry.

If you had to pick an industry to go paperless, insurance might seem an unlikely choice. Core processes for insurers typically are paper-intensive. What's more, as a whole, the industry has been somewhat slow to adopt new processes and technologies.

Insurers are always on the lookout for ways to spot fraud, and with good reason. The instances of fraud, and the variety of fraudulent activities, continue to rise.

1. Risk Management/ Climate Control