Practice management

Los Angeles – In the 1980s, Ronald Katz secured approximately 50 patents related to what would otherwise be considered a rather simple solution: technology that links a telephone to a computer. And if you operate a call center that uses telephony integration or interactive voice applications patented by Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing L.P., you are probably familiar with the power of his technology—and the might of the licensing behind it.

Schaumburg, Ill. - Commercial P&C carrier Zurich is targeting the needs of technology customers by providing a range of coverages designed specifically for mid-sized businesses. Zurich 's focus is on the creators and builders of technology products rather than end-users.

Chicago - Global insurance broker Willis Group Holdings Ltd., London, has acquired Chicago-based InsuranceNoodle, an Internet distributor of small business insurance.

Chicago — Risk management provider Aon Corp. and Arup, a London-based global multidisciplinary engineering and consulting firm, today announced a strategic alliance that brings to the marketplace an unprecedented pre- and post-loss consulting service that offers clients an independent, global catastrophic risk management solution.

Minneapolis - The Allianz Income Management Services division of Allianz Life Insurance Co. released its "PONG" annuity product, the Minneapolis-based insurer announced. PONG, broken down liberally, spells "P" - paychecks forever (lifetime income annuity payments), "O" - opportunity for a pay raise each and every year (payouts indexed to the S&P 500), "N" - never less income than what you start with, and "G" - guaranteed return of remaining premium to the beneficiary upon death, plus a 10% bonus (if taken as income). The PONG analogy, quite naturally, comes from the early and first real video game that helped spawn a revolution.It was quite simple and direct, much like the AIMS product, claims the company, which really goes under the name of Command Provider.

Eatontown, N.J. - Quaker Special Risk, Eatontown, N.J. , launched a new homeowners policy coverage enhancement.The "Protecting Your Family" option provides medical expense, miscellaneous expense and reward payment reimbursement related to incidents of home invasion, stalking or car jacking. The coverage is exclusively available to new and current customers of Quaker Special Risk's High Valued Homeowners Program.

Washington — The Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA), a national association of independent insurance agents and brokers, released its annual Best Practices Study, which includes the new Rule of 20 statistic, which provides a quick means of calculating whether or not an agency creates value for its shareholders.

Mayfield Village, Ohio — The Progressive Group of Insurance Cos., who introduced the first incarnation of its Web site in 1995, has unveiled its new Web 2.0 site, which they tout as the industry’s first.

Glenmont , N.Y. — Data collected by a group of professional insurance agents that ranks insurance carrier performance is now available online.The Professional Insurance Agents (PIA) of Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York, a Glenmont, N.Y.-based voluntary, membership-based trade association representing professional, independent property/casualty insurance agents, published its company performance survey database, the result of a five-year collaborative project in which PIA members ranked the performance of more than 80 insurance companies.

Few people would argue that Internet functionality has improved over the past few years. But some may argue whether consumers are shopping more on the Web. The fact is, organizations from many industries are using the Web in a variety of ways to drive potential customers to their Web sites. Recent estimates place the online advertising market at more than $28 billion. Boston-based Celent LLC cites the recent acquisitions of online advertising marketplaces by major online players such as Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft as a clear indication that a battle is on to get to the customer through online advertising. Insurance companies need to factor in the costs of marketing online and decide on a targeted strategy.The rate of online marketing growth varies among lines of business. But the constant throughout: Online marketing is growing. The insurance industry may look to other industries as the reason for the growth, says Lisa Phillips, senior analyst at New York-based eMarketer Inc. "In general, most businesses are moving at least part of their marketing budgets online. They're following consumers who are online shopping and comparing prices, etc. People have come to depend on the Internet for any kind of research," she says.

It's incredible how quickly technology, and the accessibility of the Internet and Web-enabled devices have evolved-even in the past few years. With these rapid advancements, both society and insurers are forced to adapt. So now that anyone can check claims status on their iPod, laptop or PDA from anywhere in the world, there's no excuse for carriers not to ramp up their online customer service offerings in an effort to better serve their Web-savvy client base.To many people, upgrading online customer service may seem the next logical step in the development of the Internet as a whole. However, many insurers may not be keeping pace with competition that is offering services and tools that not only attract new customers, but also address client's needs.

JACKSON LAUNCHES BENEFITS CENTERThe Living Benefits Selection Center (LBSC) from Jackson National Life Insurance Co., Lansing, Mich., is designed to enable registered representatives to get instant, client-approved output based on a client's profile information after answering a handful of qualifying questions. The tool also features multimedia presentations, fact sheets and side-by-side comparisons of Jackson's optional living benefits.

XSELL RELEASES INSURANCE FRAMEWORX PLATFORMXSell LLC, a Jacksonville, Fla., provider of on-demand marketing solutions, released XSell's Insurance FrameworX, a version of its Web-based Customer Interaction Marketing platform.

Is the demise of customer relationship management (CRM) software greatly exaggerated? Insurance Networking News asked Leo Schneider, senior vice president for insurance SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany, to explain his philosophy of why CRM, on the surface, appears to be an enterprisewide moving target.INN: What is the current perception of CRM?

If you've ever felt like your phone is ringing off the hook, you might want to consider the case of GEICO. The Chevy Chase, Md.-based auto policy giant communicates with its 7.4 million customers primarily through its call centers, which are located across the country. "Because GEICO is the fastest growing insurance company in the United States, we deal with a lot of pressure when we are handling the millions of phone calls that come in," Jess Reed, GEICO's chief information officer, tells Insurance Networking News.Indeed, given the company's direct-to-consumer model, the importance of its call centers, and the solutions that enable them, is difficult to overstate. To keep pace with the deluge of calls coming in on a daily basis, the company has long relied on help provided by telecom solutions provider AT&T, which, after a series of recent mergers, is now based in San Antonio, Texas. "It's an AT&T managed service that we overlay on top of a Cisco-based intelligent software manager," says Linda Poe, signature client director for AT&T.

Midwest Insurance Co. is an INNovators Award Winner runner-up, chosen for its strategy to replace an aging legacy policy administration system with one that now delivers real-time data to all end users.Just seven years old in 2005, Midwest Insurance Co. had already outgrown its policy administration system. "It was old client-server technology," recalls Rick Vogl, the company's vice president-IT. "The legacy system couldn't handle the volume of quotes we have coming through our system, and the amount of premiums we push through it.

Whether it's underwriting, billing or customer systems, legacy mainframe applications persist among even the most technologically advanced insurance companies. Enterprises are being forced to introduce new products and services faster than ever, and the implementation of cost-cutting strategies means that they have to do more with fewer resources.Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an effective and pragmatic approach that enables greater system agility, including the legacy mainframe solutions that house enormous amounts of policy data. New legacy-SOA integration strategies must tap into mainframe performance, security and programming resources, as well as valuable data. When they do, good things can happen. Insurers taking this more comprehensive approach and making the mainframe an active participant in SOA initiatives are experiencing success.

London - Risk Management Solutions Inc. (RMS), a Newark , Calif. , provider of products and services for catastrophe risk management, launched a new initiative among six of Lloyd's largest managing agents this week designed to change the way exposure data is used in the London Market. The RMS London Market Data Community gives members access to data that has been standardized for use among the members. Data is prepared once by the RMS Data Cleansing Team, and then made available to the community, saving subscribers the time and money involved in preparing the information individually.

Boston - Electronic application submissions have grown dramatically since 2004 but still account for less than half of all new life/health business, according to a new report from Celent, a Boston-based financial research and consulting firm.

Southern California — Two major insurers are going the extra mile to help their policyholders affected by wildfires by deploying mobile response vehicles to the disaster area. Los Angeles–based Farmers Insurance Group of Cos. is helping thousands of its customers as they file claims and begin returning to their normal lives. Farmers is trying to make it as easy as possible to file a claim by continuing to offer mobile command centers and its Mobile Catastrophe Claims Bus to serve the most customers before they are allowed to return home.