Policy adminstration

Boston - Each year in conjunction with the IASA Annual Educational Conference & Business Show, IASA's Executive Education Program presents two executive roundtable events designed specifically for chief financial officers and chief information officers.In 2006, the CFO and CIO roundtables will take place on Tuesday, June 6, at the Sheraton Copley Place Hotel in Boston, and the programs will focus on helping insurance company financial and technology executives "Navigate a Changing Landscape."

Arlington, Va. - The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), ERM Institute International Ltd (ERM-II), and the CAS/SOA Risk Management Section are jointly launching a major research project titled, "ERM Analysis of Property-Casualty Insurance Companies.""We are going to establish a new theoretical foundation for enterprise risk management, with practical guidance for ERM implementation," says Dr. Shaun Wang, executive director of ERM Institute International, and lead researcher for the project.

Chicago - Most of the insurance industry's discussion post-Hurricane Katrina has focused on the significant rating agency model changes and the compounding effect of catastrophe model changes. But a new study by Aon Re Global tells the investor side of the story."Investors clearly understand the differences between insurers and reinsurers and have set differing tolerances for each," says Stephen Mildenhall, Aon Re Services executive vice president and author of the study. "Our study confirms that investors expect higher earnings and capital volatility from reinsurers than they expect from insurers."

Boston - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) voted unanimously at its quarterly meeting in Orlando, Fla. to establish a task force to examine the impact of climate change on the U.S. insurance industry and on insurance consumers.The task force will look at how a warming climate may affect the availability and affordability of insurance for consumers and the financial health of insurance companies. The task force will also consider actions necessary to enable state regulators and insurers to mitigate and otherwise respond to these problems.

Branchville, N.J. - Selective Insurance Group Inc. has appointed Richard F. Connell senior executive vice president and chief information officer of Selective Insurance Group, Inc.,and Selective Insurance Company of America.In this position, Connell is responsible for Selective's technology strategy, automation system development and e-business technology, data processing operations, and voice and data communications.

Columbia, S.C. - BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina won a bronze World Wide Web Health Award for its online precertification, a feature on the company's Web sites that allows hospitals and physicians a quicker, simpler way to obtain authorizations.The World Wide Web Health Awards recognize the best health-related Web sites for consumers and professionals. The Health Information Resource Center (HIRC), a national clearinghouse for consumer health information programs and materials, organizes the program.

Wakefield, Mass. - Darwin Partners Inc., a provider of a range of IT services to Fortune 1000 companies, and Suzsoft Co. Ltd., a China-based provider of outsourced application development, quality assurance, and localization services, have announced plans to merge.Founded in 2001, Suzsoft is privately held and has grown rapidly to become a leading IT outsourcing platform in China specializing in several industry verticals, including financial services, health care, technology, insurance and telecommunications.

Armonk, N.Y. - The IBM Chief Finance Officers Study of 900 senior finance executives worldwide reveals only 14% of insurance respondents rate themselves highly effective in supporting the CEOs efforts to grow the company.The study, developed in co-operation with The Economist Intelligence Unit, finds that at a huge cost to the future competitiveness of companies, almost 50% of executives report finance staff are tied up in transactional activities such as processing accounts and tax transactions, with only a quarter of staff focused on decision support--performance and growth focused activities. Furthermore, respondents state 64% of Insurance finance organizations do not have robust processes and activities in place to support growth.

Boulder, Colo. - Carriers may need to prepare for a storm that has the capability to affect GPS systems and create blackouts. Using a computer model of solar dynamics, scientists at the Boulder, Colo.-based National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are predicting the next sunspot cycle to be 30% to 50% stronger than the last one and begin as much as a year late. Predicting the sun's cycles accurately, years in advance, will help societies plan for active bouts of solar storms, which can slow satellite orbits, disrupt communications and bring down power systems.

Today, various high-tech systems, such as GPS and online map services, help people navigate the physical world, taking the guesswork out of the task of getting from point A to point B.People can now go online, type in some address criteria and a map is generated instantly, detailing critical intersections, which way to go and when to turn. What the claims world needs is an analogous system-one that helps the claims adjuster navigate the complex terrain of business and regulatory requirements.

Before they landed triple Axels, they learned how to balance on a blade and skate across the ice. Before they attacked moguls at blazing speeds, they cruised down relatively flat planes. Before they maneuvered a puck all the way across the rink while weaving through opponents from the other team, they learned how to carry a stick while skating across the ice.Sure, much of what viewers saw at the recent Olympic Games in Torino, Italy, involved the awe-inspiring skills of elite athletes. All of these competitors, however, mastered the basics first. Many other athletes-think weekend warriors-never move much beyond these fundamentals.

Everyone loves a story about the "little guy" who succeeds. From the children's classic The Little Engine that Could to numerous business books that describe how a couple of college buddies put a couple of bolts together in their garage and invented something that turned them into millionaires, tales of human perseverance and redemption touch a deep chord in the soul.This is one of those stories. It's about a group of four IT people at CUNA Mutual Group who faced what seemed an almost impossible feat. They were charged with custom-building a customer relationship management system in six months with a budget of $1 million.

Rapid growth. It's a "problem" most companies would welcome. Yet, along with accelerated growth comes a bevy of new challenges. At Geico and its affiliated companies, for example, when written premiums grew from $4.1 billion in 1998 to $4.9 billion in 1999, the company had to process twice as many agent licenses with state insurance departments-just to keep enough agents on the phones selling auto policies."In one year, we jumped from about 27,000 active licenses and 48,000 appointments to 55,000 licenses and 115,000 appointments," says Dan Corridon, director of licensing administration at Government Employees Insurance Co. (Geico), the Chevy Chase, Md.-based direct insurer. "We needed a system that was going to do more for us than what we were using."

Shortly after I returned from IsoTech last November, I received one of those forwarded "chain" e-mails. Unlike most chain e-mails I receive, I actually read this one, and, surprisingly, it pertained to a controversial topic that came up at ISOTech during the roundtable session, titled "The Next 'Killer Technology' in Insurance."Panelist Kevin Kelly, managing director, U.S. insurance industry, Microsoft Corp., said he thought sensing technologies were the next killer technology, and he described how radio frequency identification devices could be attached to people or assets to enable the industry to obtain a plethora of information about who or what it's insuring. "There's a privacy element," he admitted. "But people will give up some privacy for convenience."

The insurance industry, long saddled with paperwork-intensive processes, has become prime turf for enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. ECM is the catchall phrase for what was originally a plethora of solutions, ranging from imaging systems to records management.To carriers seeking to expand their business lines and speed up processing at as little additional cost as possible, content management may be more than some glitzy new technology; it may fundamentally change the nature of the insurance business.

Insurance Networking News recently interviewed Joe Clabby, vice president, server and storage systems strategies, at Summit Strategies Inc., a marketing strategy and consulting firm based in Boston. Clabby has a strong background in networking, systems platforms, operating environments and business application reengineering. He has been in the computing industry for more than 25 years, and has written numerous reports, including "Staring Down the Storage Sinkhole."INN: You describe the current state of storage as a "fragmented morass of data management, storage management, back-up and recovery, as well as related technologies, management tools and manual processes." How did we get in this mess?

The insurance industry has faced fundamental and permanent changes in the last few years. The introduction of e-business to the industry, increased adoption of single-entry, multiple-carrier interfaces (SEMCI) and interactive systems, the educational needs of agents who must adapt to new technologies, along with post-Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act integration pressures, have challenged traditional models and the IT strategies that sustained them.Add to that the increasing financial and performance pressures, and the industry faces a problem common to other financial services segments: how to make the most of existing investments in legacy and other systems, while being nimble in developing new lines of business, partnerships and products.

Segundo, Calif. - Two U.S. surveys of property/casualty insurance customers show a large, untapped opportunity for cost control through electronic billing.Conducted for Computer Sciences Corp. by MarketSearch Corp., a survey of car and homeowner insurance billing methods found 88% of auto insurance customers and 93% of homeowner insurance customers still receive bills by mail. Yet 73% of respondents surveyed indicated they would be willing to pay their insurance bills over the Internet. A second survey that asked approximately 350 P&C professionals at CSC's Connect 2005 conference about their own personal insurance experience confirmed these findings.

Schaumburg, Ill. - Expanding on its seminal 2002 study report, "A Comparative Analysis of Claims-based Methods of Health Risk Assessment for Commercial Populations," the Society of Actuaries (SOA) has appointed Milliman USA to produce an updated version of the study.The 2002 report, which evaluated the state of the art in predictive modeling software for health care claims at that time, provided an unbiased forum for comparing the technology and methodologies then available in the market. With the passage of three years and the continuous refinement of these methodologies and software, the SOA strongly felt a fresh look at the tools would provide immediate practical benefits to the health care community.

Novato, Calif. - Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. has named Oliver Bussman as its chief information officer, according to Charles (Chuck) Kavitsky, chief executive officer.Bussman has many years of IT leadership experience in the banking, insurance and asset management industries. He will lead the implementation and delivery of the significant IT investment Fireman's Fund has made to improve its customer and employee experience and to its operational effectiveness.