Policy adminstration

London - Guy Carpenter & Co. Inc., a global risk and reinsurance specialist and a part of the Marsh & McLennan Cos., is launching its Electronic Claims File (ECF) initiative for reinsurers in the London market after development, testing and implementation of a pilot project with select Lloyd's managing agents.As one of the largest reinsurance brokers to offer ECF, a key component of the broader London Market reform program, Guy Carpenter will be able to process and conduct many of its claims transactions in a completely paperless environment with its current trading partners.

The analysts say it's a given. More than 65% of insurance companies in a study conducted more than two years ago by Gartner Inc., a Stamford, Conn., research firm, agreed that the general trend for IT architecture is toward a "services-oriented approach."Mark Gorman, research director with TowerGroup, a Needham, Mass.-based research firm, says its current research confirms that carriers are using some form of services-oriented architecture (SOA). "Carriers are more advanced in their knowledge of SOA," he says. "They're not just analyzing it any more."

Like perfection, Straight-through processing (STP) is something many insurance company IT departments are striving for but may find hard to call fully conquered.

I had the pleasure recently of meeting malcom gladwell, the well-known New York author of "The Tipping Point" and his latest treatise, "Blink." Gladwell had been invited to speak to a group of insurance and banking executives on the theories contained in his new book; namely, that great decision-makers are not those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing."Thin-slicing refers to the snap (in the blink of an eye) decisions we make based on the ability to filter-from an overwhelming number of variables-the very few factors that matter to the subject at hand.

You have heard, and probably have even used, the phrase: "Time is of the essence." No one knows that better than insurers answering requests from customers who want their information now. Hence, the real-time phenomenon in the industry.After discovering customer data wasn't easily accessible, executives at Sioux Falls-based South Dakota State Medical Holding Co. Inc. (Dakotacare) decided the company needed a business intelligence tool to retrieve claims data from its database of 140 million records.

When Brigitte Hamilton looks back on the humble beginnings of her organization's intranet, there were only six divisional areas of the site and upwards of about 500 pages.That was in 1997. Since then, Oregon's largest workers' compensation insurance company, Salem-based State Accident Insurance Fund of Oregon (SAIF), has added nearly a dozen other divisional areas to its Web site, resulting in a page count pushing 15,000.

The best analogy for insurance technology solutions may be "trying to put a square peg in a round hole." And I suppose no matter which cliché you use, the meaning is the same: making an inappropriate object or solution fit where it doesn't really belong.With a plethora of similar technology solutions invading the insurance industry, determining which one really is "next-generation," "cutting-edge" or "the perfect fit" is often virtually impossible. For instance, the confusion surrounding one of today's most useful and functional technology solutions-enterprise content management (ECM)-has put more than one insurer in a tough spot.

New York - In an effort to improve the quality, availability and performance of its Web-based Policy Express policy issuance system, Hastings Mutual Insurance, a regional insurance company serving the Midwest, has deployed AppSight Application Problem Resolution System from Identify Software. Policy Express is a vital business application that is accessed by nearly 850 Hastings agents each day as they quote and write customers' policies. Ninety percent of all new homeowners and personal automobile policies that Hastings issues are processed though Policy Express."We were initially looking for a performance management solution to improve our service levels by detecting application performance problems before they become a productivity issue for our agent community," says Bob Eshelbrenner, CIO of Hastings Mutual Insurance. "With AppSight, we can not only identify our applications' performance problems faster, we also gain the visibility to rapidly determine the root cause, leading to a much faster resolution, which is the end-game after all."

Overland Park, Kan. - Brooke Franchise Corp., a subsidiary of Brooke Corp., is acquiring all property/casualty retail customer accounts from InsWeb Insurance Services. These auto and homeowners policies were written through InsWeb's Web site. Most of the acquired accounts are located in geographical areas where Brooke franchises are located and Brooke Franchise plans to sell these accounts to existing franchisees who want to generate additional revenues.Brooke Franchise also acquired from InsWeb a significant amount of account information that provides cross-selling and other opportunities to Brooke franchisees. This marketing information will be analyzed by Brooke's advertising center and distributed to local franchisees in a manner that protects customer privacy.

New York - The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America has launched a new proprietary Web-based system designed to help financial representatives use the Internet to enable their clients to instantly gauge their financial health.Using the system, financial representatives and their clients can coordinate accounts from a menu of more than 3,000 financial institutions, access copies of legal and financial documents from anywhere in the world, and get an up- to-date snapshot of their financial well-being through a "Living Balance Sheet."

Farmington, Conn.-InsurBanc, a federal savings bank organized in 2001 specifically to serve independent insurance agents, brokers and their clients, is focusing its efforts to offer competitive personal banking products such as checking accounts, savings accounts, certificates of deposit, retirement accounts, credit and debit cards and online banking."Now that more and more agents have placed their trust in us and realize our commitment to helping them succeed and plan for their business futures, they are also looking to us for competitive personal products," says David W. Tralka, president and CEO of InsurBanc.

Toronto - IT Governance 2006, a symposium designed to equip financial services and other organizations with the knowledge needed to identify and implement a sound IT governance framework, including the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT), will be held August 6-8 in Orlando.

Chapin, S.C. - With roots in the insurance industry, General Information Services Inc. (GIS) claims to be one of the two original providers of nationwide background investigations.

Toronto - One of the country's largest providers of health, dental, group, life, disability and long-term care benefits, Aetna Inc. has selected CiRBA's data center intelligence (DCI) solution to capture and better understand the attributes and dynamics of the company's data center assets and resources"Aetna is expanding its business through acquisition and organic growth at an accelerated rate, with revenues increasing to over $22.5 billion in 2005," says Patti Schlosser, head of server & storage services, of Aetna Information Services. "Supporting an employee base of 28,000, Aetna's business segments demand increased flexibility, performance and reliability from its IT resources. With the growth of our business, the size, diversity and complexity of our IT infrastructure have dramatically increased, requiring us to have a firm grip on the management of the technologies and processes within that environment. We view CiRBA's Data Center Intelligence (DCI) as a solution that will immediately address Aetna's configuration management and compliance reporting requirements."

Baltimore - With last year's record catastrophe losses of $58 billion still fresh in listeners' minds, AIR Worldwide President and CEO Karen Clark warns property/casualty claims professionals that they face "a 5% chance we'll have losses greater than Hurricane Katrina in 2006."In her keynote remarks at the 2006 PCS Catastrophe Conference, Clark also predicted catastrophe losses "will double about every 10 years due to increases in the numbers and values of properties at risk."

San Francisco--The Phoenix Companies Inc., a Hartford, Conn.-based provider of life insurance, annuity and asset management products, is using San Francisco-based salesforce.com Inc.'s AppExchange platform to customize, create, deploy and manage a number of business critical applications.Phoenix recently sought to replace the software that managed its relationships with independent agents who sell life insurance policies. The company evaluated several leading customer relationship management (CRM) products, including vertical financial services solutions, and decided that salesforce.com's automation offered the flexibility, user-friendliness, connectivity and customization ability to meet its business needs. With AppExchange platform, Phoenix was able to build and deploy custom applications to support its life insurance division's sales, marketing, finance and human resources organizations.

New York - In the April 2006 online edition of Marketplace Realities and Risk Management Solutions, Willis Group Holdings describes events in the natural catastrophe (Nat Cat) segment of the property marketplace as "nothing less than tumultuous." Directly affected are "clients with assets and operations in areas exposed to the Nat Cat perils of wind, flood and earthquake and to the peril of terrorism."With the beginning of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season fast approaching, "Terms and conditions offered by insurers and reinsurers have deteriorated rapidly and precipitously." The bar has been raised "for program design and marketing strategies for programs renewing in the near term, while prompting comprehensive studies of long-term business plans and risk-funding arrangements."

Sun Prairie, Wis. - Agents across General Casualty's Midwestern and Northeastern operating territory can now quote, submit and bind business auto coverage through the company's Web site.This new capability is designed to complement the company's existing online quoting/submission systems for its commercial marketplace (BOP), contractors and workers' compensation products, making it possible to submit an entire account via the Internet.

Washington, D.C. - Microsoft Corp. has launched a technology framework for the health plan industry, called "Knowledge Driven Health Plans." The announcement came as Microsoft participated in the third annual World Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C.As health plans face mounting pressure to respond to the rising costs of healthcare, growing member and provider expectations, intense competition, regulation, and the inefficiencies of a fragmented care-delivery ecosystem, Microsoft's Knowledge Driven Health Plans solutions framework is designed to deliver a technology platform that enables seamless business transformation. Microsoft and its industry partners are working together to provide health plans with integrated solutions designed to improve collaboration and access to information, thereby empowering people to make business and healthcare decisions that are based on the best evidence available.

Newark, Calif. – A new 2006 analysis from Risk Management Solutions (RMS) reveals that a Mw7.9 earthquake on the northern section of the San Andreas Fault today would result in at least $260 billion of damages to residential and commercial exposures, of which $50 billion to $80 billion would be covered by property and workers' compensation insurers. In contrast to the 1906 event, where 80% of the losses were caused by fire, less than 15% of the estimated total insured property losses are expected to be fire-related in 2006.The study analyzes the impacts of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire based on the 2006 population and property exposures of the San Francisco Bay Area. The property and workers 'compensation losses estimated in the RMS report include residential and commercial property and contents losses, as well as direct business interruption and additional living expenses due to ground shaking. In the RMS scenario, strong ground shaking affects 19 Bay Area counties, with an estimated building inventory value of approximately $2 trillion for residential, commercial, and industrial properties.