Hartford, Conn. - Travelers seems to understand that the term "in sickness and in health" can take on an additional meaning for the more than 3,000 weddings that take place every day in the U.S. with the average cost of wedding now reaching $27,000* the Hartford, Conn. insurer is launching of its Wedding Protector Plan, an insurance policy covering weddings. The company plans to attract this niche market with a special Web site, AgentProtectMyWedding.com. The site is designed to help consumers learn about wedding insurance, and includes a premium calculator and a risk quiz to help consumers determine how much risk surrounds their wedding. Consumers can also use the online agent locator to find a nearby Travelers independent agent to discuss purchasing protection. Coverage can be purchased within 14 days of the event. The Web site also offers an e-newsletter for newlyweds, which covers topics from lifestyle to money management tips, designed to help couples become in-synch with their lives as one. The Wedding Protector Plan provides coverage, with no deductible, for a variety of unfortunate occurrences associated with a wedding event. For example, coverage is provided if a hurricane causes the necessary and unavoidable cancellation or postponement of the event. Other coverage includes postponement for withdrawal of military leave, forfeited and lost deposits, extra expenses associated with special attire, transportation, photographs, and entertainment expenses. The Travelers reports that the top wedding claims and problems typically include damage to wedding attire, mishaps with event photography, cancellation due to illness or bereavement, and no-shows by contracted vendors.** * Conde Nast Bridal Media - American Wedding Study, 2006** MSN.com (UK) Source: The Travelers, a business of The St. Paul Travelers Companies Inc.

Gig Harbor, Wash. - Jon Kaplan, head of financial services, advertising, for Google, Inc. and Roger Dawson, a nationally recognized speaker, negotiator and author, will headline the 2007 annual meeting of the Insurance Marketing Communication Association (IMCA), June 3-6, 2007 in Newport, R.I. In his role, Kaplan sets the overall strategy for Google's national advertising sales team and for enhancing product offerings, and works with regional sales teams on strategic clients. Roger Dawson, a full-time speaker and author, is considered a negotiations expert. A full-time speaker since 1982, Dawson has trained managers and salespeople at top companies and leading associations throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. Jeanne Salavatore, senior vice president, public affairs, Insurance Information Institute, is also scheduled to address the group. She will "grade" the insurance industry on how well it is doing in its communications in her presentation, "Why Insurers Should Care About Communications." Source: Insurance Marketing Communication Association

Warren, N.J. - With businesses of all sizes looking to buy and sell overseas, the Chubb Group of Insurance Cos., Warren, N.J., released an ocean cargo policy and launched CargoPort, an online system that enables customers to view their policies, submit claims and monitor shipping activities.

New York - Insurers are taking enterprise risk management (ERM) seriously, but many companies have begun ERM programs without taking the necessary step of getting management consensus on risk appetite.

Las Vegas - An Allstate executive is among the IT pros who have been named winners of the Pink Elephant Inc. 2007 IT Infrastructure Library Awards.

An insurance trade group has joined a chorus of New York officials in asking Congress to renew the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, which is set to expire at the end of this year.

Washington - Insurers are urging Congress to preserve a federal anti-trust exemption granted to the industry in 1945. The exemption has come under scrutiny by legislators in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, insurance trade associations say.

Chicago - The fortunes of two industries are beginning to intertwine, according to Cards & Payments, a Chicago-based sister publication of Insurance Networking News.

Atlanta - Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia Foundation (BCBSGa Foundation), which supports the charitable activities of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia, awarded $80,000 grants to 11 rural hospitals across the state of Georgia have each been awarded for the purchase of a teleradiology system.Teleradiology enables small, rural hospitals to connect with radiologists in larger cities to receive and interpret radiology images. Utilizing digital technology and specialized computer monitors, remote radiologists in Savannah, Atlanta, Macon and other major markets will be able to receive images and provide faster diagnosis and consultations to attending physicians in rural areas.

The metadata standards that streamline company-to-company communication can do double duty as prototypes for internal data management within a single insurance carrier."If it has already been invented in the industry, why should we think that we're going to be able to invent our own that's better?" reasons Rich Maynard, an enterprise architect for The Hartford Financial Services Group, Hartford, Conn. He's one of many insurance executives who view industry metadata standards that way.

Still in development, it doesn't have an official name, yet the ground swell for the electronic insurance exchange appears to be growing.Depending upon whom you ask, the "exchange" is the best technology for the insurance industry since the Internet, a "me-too" service that will only add complexity to the supply chain, or a behemoth to be reckoned with by carriers and producers alike.

Bring up the topic of Windows Vista in a crowded room of IT experts, and you're sure to get a variety of reactions and comments. People aren't shy about sharing their perceptions-positive or negative-about the new operating system from Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. Just search the term on the Internet, and you could be reading for weeks.After years of talk about Vista, Microsoft released the system to businesses on Nov. 30, 2006.

It took two centuries to fill the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with more than 29 million books and periodicals, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps and 57 million manuscripts.Today, it takes about 15 minutes for the world to churn out an equivalent amount of new digital information. It does so about 100 times every day, for a grand total of five exabytes annually.

DIRECT MARKETING TOOL ENHANCEDMelissa Data announced the addition of multi-platform capabilities to the Canadian Address Object, a complementary product to the Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif. company's Data Quality Suite, a direct-marketing tool that verifies and corrects address, phone and contact data.

With so much business conducted via the Internet, executives at Winged Keel Group Inc. decided the staff had to save each-and-every e-mail message, simply to keep the boutique life insurance and long-term disability firm on the right track."We are a technologically advanced company, so a lot of our business was being conducted via e-mail," says Pramod Navani, managing director of operations at the New York-based insurer. "A few years ago, our company instituted a rule that no one was allowed to delete e-mails."

STRATEGIC GOALS GUIDE IT SPENDINGSenior insurance IT executives are making strategic investments, but budgets and staff size are generally flat or growing only modestly.

European and Asian life insurers are outpacing their North American counterparts at streamlining and centralizing policy administration systems-the core systems that support and deliver insurance products for their customers, according to a global survey of more than 100 insurance technology professionals commissioned by Bermuda-based Accenture.Globally, respondents that have consolidated their policy administration systems on average reported a 19% reduction in operating costs, a 25% reduction in IT costs and a 35% increase in the speed at which they introduce products.

INSURER AUTOMATES INTERNAL CONTROLSPhysicians Mutual, based in Omaha, Neb., selected OpenPages FCM for its financial controls management initiatives. OpenPages FCM is an enterprise financial controls management solution designed to reduce time and resource costs associated with ongoing financial reporting regulations. It is expected to reduce Physician Mutual's time and costs associated with efforts to comply with changes to National Association of Insurance Companies financial reporting regulations. "OpenPages allows us to automate our ongoing assessment and monitoring of internal controls and ensure that compliance initiatives align with our business strategy," says Barbara Bergmeier, senior vice president of internal audit, Physicians Mutual.

Unwilling to deal with the tribulations of converting to new IT hardware, many insurance companies cling to legacy systems despite inconvenience, high costs, inflexibility and a decided lack of nimbleness.And the consequences of relying upon past-its-prime hardware and operating systems don't end there, according to Chad Hersh, a senior analyst for the Boston-based research and consulting firm Celent LLC and author of the report "Legacy and Mainframe Migration: An Insurance Imperative."

A policy administration system (PAS) used to perform limited activities: rate, issue and maintain property/casualty policies in volume. Working almost in isolation, it was attended solely by the hierarchy of underwriters and policy processors. No one else could touch it; any attempt to mess with such a core system was deemed too risky. Mainframe and client-server applications also limited functionality and ease of use.Web-based systems changed everything, resulting in more demand from captive and independent agents and managing general agencies for access to quoting, rating and even issuance. Claims adjusters and third-party administrators also wanted more access to policy data.