Security risk

BOSTON-- John Hancock has launched a new long-term care insurance (LTCI) program called Corporate Solutions for the small business market to help provide individual LTCI at the worksite in the way that best suits employers' and employees' needs.

COLUMBUS, Ohio-- Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., one of the country's largest property and casualty insurance companies, has received more than 22,000 claims in the past week for damages from Hurricane Charley. Overall, Nationwide estimates it will receive more than 50,000 claims and losses approaching $400 million.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.--A small but growing group of customers are turning to the Internet rather than phone calls or office visits to communicate with their auto insurance provider, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2004 National Auto Insurance Study released today.

ING has made enhancements to its online services for employer groups. The enhanced services include online reports, online documents, online evidence of insurability and online billing for self-accounting customers.

DAYTON, Ohio-- The Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund (MAIF), created by the Maryland State Legislature to provide insurance coverage for the state's most at-risk drivers, has chosen RiskWise solutions from LexisNexis, an information solution provider, to help screen information provided by applicants and claimants in an effort to proactively identify rate evasion and claims fraud.

A lot has been made about insurers' attempt to comply with federal regulations, such as The USA Patriot Act and Sarbanes-Oxley, but lost often in the shuffle are the ongoing state-level regulations with which insurers must contend.

NEEDHAM, Mass.-- North American insurers currently are pursuing global expansion at a pace rivaling that of European insurers' entry into US markets in the early 1990s. TowerGroup finds that more favorable economics, key demographic trends and the gradual dissolution of international barriers to entry underscore the high growth possible for U.S. insurers in key emerging markets.

In the legal profession, attorneys refer to it as the "discovery" process where a legal team embarks upon intensive fact-finding to construct its case.At Bloomington, Ill.-based State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., there's a variation of the concept that's beginning to take shape. It's all part of State Farm's attempt to optimize cross-selling opportunities within its multi-product line that spans homeowners, life, annuities and mutual funds, to name a few.

Insurance companies are quite accustomed to living with regulations. With each state promulgating its own requirements, carriers consider investments of time and resources for state filing and reporting as a fundamental cost of doing business.But several federal laws enacted over the last few years are ratcheting up the costs and complexity of regulatory compliance for the insurance industry, which is forcing carriers to consider a broader role for technology in their compliance programs.

SEATTLE, Aug. 2--Safeco today announced it has completed the sale of its Life & Investments (L&I) operation to an investor group led by White Mountains Insurance Group, Ltd., and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Safeco completed the sales of Safeco Trust Company in April 2004 and Talbot Financial Corporation in July 2004.

PEARL RIVER, NY--41 states are now accepting the ACORD Life Form Life Application Part 1, ACORD announced. This is a major step in a multi-year initiative and is supported by numerous life insurance companies and associations, including NAILBA and NAVA.

PORTLAND, Ore.-- Standard Insurance Company, a subsidiary of StanCorp Financial Group, Inc. has appointed Brad Nantz as vice president of Sales and Ellen Steel as vice president of Operations for the Employee Benefits Division.

Grange Insurance, Columbus, Ohio, has licensed EDR InSight, a set of solutions designed for claims professionals to facilitate the use of automotive Event Data Recorder (EDR) or "black box" data in the claims evaluation process.Grange will use EDR InSight, provided by Injury Sciences LLC, San Antonio, to identify vehicles with harvestable black box data. Grange claim representatives will use EDR InSight to schedule harvesting services from a network of mobile service providers and for analysis and interpretation of the EDR data.

BOSTON--John Hancock Life Insurance Company has quadrupled the long-term care insurance (LTCI) operations professionals who support the sale of its LTCI products from 6 staff members to 24. The expanded support enhances service for its existing LTCI channels including career agents, its national account team, managing general agents (MGAs) and banks, and allows the company to serve two new channels, brokerage general agents (BGAs) and broker-dealers.

BOSTON--The American Insurance Association (AIA) is pushing Congress for a two-year extension of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), an extension that AIA says will help avoid destabilizing the insurance market and the economy, and will enable policymakers to develop a more permanent solution for managing our nation's economic exposure to catastrophic terrorism.

Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA), a Washington, D.C.-based CEO public policy and advocacy group composed of security software, hardware and service vendors to address key cyber security issues, has released its recommendations for the development of a secure electronic health care system.These recommendations are designed to support the nation's first strategic framework report on a 10-year initiative to develop electronic health records and other uses of health information technology, which was announced today by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and David J. Brailer, M.D., Ph. D., the National Health Information Technology Coordinator.

Safeco today announced strong second-quarter results, reflecting the company's solid underwriting and the competitive strength of its automated sales platform. In addition, weather-related catastrophe losses were relatively light for the second quarter. The company posted net income of $247.5 million -- or $1.77 per diluted share. This represents an increase over second-quarter 2003 net income, which was $111.9 million--or $0.81 per diluted share.

New York--Fitch Ratings has revised its Rating Outlook for the U.S. commercial lines insurance sector to Stable from Negative. Fitch had maintained a Negative Rating Outlook on the sector since September 2000.

WebMD Corp., Elmwood Park, N.J., has released a white paper on the implementation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that concludes the law's administrative simplification provisions are increasing in complexity and costs for healthcare providers and payers across the country.The White Paper, which is the result of WebMD's analysis of HIPAA implementation nationwide, identifies concrete steps that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services can take to steer the implementation back on course, through what the company calls a "rational roll- out plan."

Allstate Insurance Co., Northbrook, Ill., filed a half-million dollar lawsuit against a Philadelphia chiropractic clinic, All-Care Chiropractic, alleging fraudulent billing practices for insurance claims involving patients with personal injury lawsuits.The suit alleges that All-Care owners and operators Richard Walinsky, D.C. and Eileen Nelson Means, D.C. fraudulently billed Allstate for treatments that were never performed, over billed for services that were performed and used improperly licensed and unsupervised personnel for in-home patient visits.