Security risk

Margin compression and continued pricing erosion is pressuring the insurance industry to achieve top-line objectives in 2008, according to Ernst & Young's Global Insurance Center.

The Foundation for Health Coverage Education captured, on a single Web site database, government-sponsored programs to help consumers in need of health coverage. This may be just in time, as California is set to vote on a mandatory health insurance bill.

Boston - AIR Worldwide Corp. (AIR), a provider of risk management data and services, announced results of the latest research by its team of scientists into the link between the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic basin and landfall activity. The latest findings provide a context for better understanding the 2004-2007 hurricane seasons and demonstrate that using Atlantic basin activity as a proxy for landfall activity can lead to erroneous estimates of both landfall risk and potential insured losses, says the company.

ERM platforms help gather data across siloed risk management domains, presenting an enterprisewide view of risk.

A new survey indicates mixed reactions to the reporting law.

Carriers can use technologies such as business process management to help navigate the regulatory maze.

Chicago - While winter storms do not attract the attention of mega-catastrophes such as hurricanes and earthquakes, these smaller events can add up to impact insurers' bottom lines say experts. However, insurers can now avail themselves of such risks by using new technology to better assess the risks from winter storms and fires, risk modeling experts report.

Sircon Corp. an Okemos, Mich., provider of comprehensive producer lifecycle services for the insurance industry, announced a partnership with the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors - Pennsylvania (NAIFA-PA), a statewide trade association representing approximately 2,300 licensed professionals who provide life, health and multiline insurance and related financial services in Pennsylvania.

Insurance companies—including actuaries and IT executives—will be under growing pressure to enhance their financial management system capabilities as they face changing financial reporting requirements, and more extensive risk management challenges in 2008.

New York - XL Insurance, the global insurance operation of XL Capital Ltd., has completed the purchase of Global Asset Protection Services LLC (GAPS) from Swiss Re. GAPS is a provider of unbundled loss prevention consulting services, offering individually tailored risk management solutions to risk managers, insurance brokers and insurance company clients operating on a global basis.

Washington – A bill that would provide $100 million in grants to help local officials enforce building codes has been introduced into the House. Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan., sponsored the legislation, which is dubbed The Community Building Code Administration Grant Act of 2007.

Regulators advise the public to become aware of ID theft vulnerabilities, while carriers are using technology and third-party help to thwart the bad guys and bolster customer services levels.

Trenton, N.J.– A bill that will eliminate the requirements for auto insurance agents to provide quotes for all their companies and to provide three insurance scenarios to applicants has passed the New Jersey Legislature.

Boston–Lexington Insurance Co. enhanced its Employment Practices Liability (EPL) insurance offerings to include E-Discovery Response, a new endorsement designed to cover an insured’s payroll expenses incurred while retrieving electronically stored information requested during discovery in a covered EPL claim.

Arson Registry Act Passes House

Two teams of conferees headed by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D.-Conn.) and House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) are meeting this week in an attempt to reconcile their differing visions on the extension of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.

Thanks to new technologies, carriers are unearthing fraud such as "rent-a-patient" schemes and physician upcoding.

It's no secret that the insurance industry takes a relatively dire view of regulatory compliance. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is reported to have cost public companies across all verticals $35 billion last year. If the popular press is correct, that equates to 30,000 man-hours per company, per year, to comply. Although it's a given that promoting accurate bookkeeping (not cooked books) is simply best practice, the only companies seeming to benefit from compliance efforts are the pool of compliance-related technology solution providers.

Tropics Software Technologies announced its new Director of Software Development, Robert Sillett. Sillett will concentrate his efforts on the new Tropics .NET platform. He has teamed up with the Tropics system designer and recruited consulting help to build a robust .NET architecture for the upcoming versions of Tropics software.

Washington — Insurance industry associations are obliging to a request for comments by the U.S. Treasury Department as it conducts a review of the regulatory structure associated with financial institutions. Several associations used the opportunity to reiterate their opposition to the creation of the optional federal charter (OFC) for the insurance industry. Senators Tim Johnson, D-N.D. and John Sununu, R-N.H., introduced the National Insurance Act of 2007 into the upper house in May.