Boston - The 78th Annual Educational Conference & Business Show held by Insurance Accounting and Systems Association Inc. (IASA) concluded today after three days of events. More than 1,100 pre-registered for the show in Boston

Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, and Dayton, Ohio -- Whitehill Technologies Inc. has purchased InSystems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Standard Register, a document services provider based in Dayton, Ohio. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed."We believe that InSystems will be better positioned for success as part of a software company," says Dennis Rediker, Standard Register's president and CEO. "InSystems is a recognized software technology leader with an attractive customer base in the insurance market."

Chattanooga, Tenn. - UnumProvident's new Web-based enrollment platform, called plane.biz, is now fully functional for all worksite benefits to help employees navigate the complexity of today's benefits arena.Benefits professionals are facing significant issues: The population is aging; healthcare costs continue to increase; pension plans are strained; and employees are demanding more choice in their benefits options. The result is an unprecedented shift to supplemental benefit options and cost-sharing, heightening the need for effective benefit communications.

McLean, Va. - The transformation of core policy administration systems and processes is one of the most critical success factors for property and casualty insurance companies in the coming decade, according to a report issued today by BearingPoint Inc. a McLean, Va., global management and technology consulting firm.

New York - Results from a recent employee benefits benchmarking report and Web-based companion tool issued by New York-based MetLife revealed that for small companies (with between 2 and 49 employees), "retaining employees" is the number one employee benefits objective (57%). Yet retention rates are at risk, as only 29% of employees who work for a small company are satisfied with the benefits offered by their employer - despite the fact that MetLife research indicates a correlation between job satisfaction, employee loyalty and benefits satisfaction. Additionally, only 16% say that their company's benefits communication effectively educates them about their benefits. Their peers at the largest companies (25,000+ employees), however, are much more satisfied with their benefits (48%) and 39% believe that their company's benefits communication is effective.

Newark, N.J.-Prudential Financial Inc. finalized its acquisition of Northbrook, Ill.-based Allstate Financial's variable annuity business through a reinsurance transaction.Prudential's initial investment in the business, reflecting total consideration to Allstate, related taxes and capital requirements, is approximately $591 million. This amount reflects a price adjustment paid to Allstate for market movements between signing and closing. Over the course of a transition period of up to 24 months from closing, Newark, N.J.-based Prudential will assume the administration of Allstate Financial's in-force variable annuities, with account values of approximately $17 billion (value as of March 31, 2006).

From call centers to data centers, the insurance industry continues to turn to outsourcing in an effort to manage costs and secure access to resources. Information technology assets have become vital to ongoing operations and new growth, making these outsourcing relationships more than technology arrangements-they are now critical to business success. Combined with new regulatory mandates, this trend may be forcing carriers to push deeper and engage more proactively with outsourcing vendors.IT industry analyst firm Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn., calculates that outsourcing will capture up to 33% of all IT services spending across industries by 2008-up from 26% in 2003. The analyst firm also predicts the insurance sector will be spending more than $10 billion on outsourced services by that time.

We've seen a lot of wacky technology job titles come and go over the years, especially among those "bleeding-edge" financial and technology companies that found themselves in fast company circles. What ever happened to the "minister of progress" or the "chief imagination officer"? Today we are seeing legitimacy offered to the "business architect," "process analyst" and "SOA enterprise architect."One name that I've always found rather interesting is "data steward." The title has been around for several years, chiefly as additional iterations of "database administrator," "data analyst" and "data master."

SAFECO NAMES WILLIAM JENKS AS CIO

NEW CSF DESIGNER FEATURESMetavante Corp., Milwaukee, has added a number of features to its CSF Designer document composition application:

Insurance CFOs seem to be get-ting a bad rap. According to a recent study, insurance finance executives are so busy dealing with compliance obligations and administrative duties, they are finding it difficult to support their CEOs' growth initiatives.Developed in cooperation with The Economist Intelligence Unit, a London-based provider of industry analysis information, IBM's 2005 Global CFO Study reflects the responses of some 900 senior finance executives across the communications, distribution, financial, industrial and public sectors in 74 countries. Of those 900, 44 respondents came directly from the insurance industry.

The NAIC formation of a task force to examine climate change comes on the heels of devastating back-to-back hurricane seasons that caused a record $30 billion in U.S. insured losses in 2004 and as much as $60 billion in insured losses from Hurricane Katrina alone in 2005. Insurance Networking News magazine recently interviewed Tim Wagner, director of the Nebraska Department of Insurance, who is co-leading the task force, to find out what the NAIC hopes to achieve.INN: Who at the NAIC became aware of the issue, and how was it pushed forward on the agenda?

Last year was a turning point for cyber attacks. It was the year when the predominant threats on the Internet transitioned from being perpetrated by hobbyist hackers to criminals.This is according to a recent report issued by Counterpane Internet Security Inc., a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of network protection services, and MessageLabs Ltd., a provider of messaging security with regional headquarters in New York City.

For some time now, insurance companies have made technology investments a priority. The result? Instead of disparate, paper-based information residing in hard-to-access metal file cabinets, all kinds of e-data languish in disconnected computer systems.Now, insurance companies are realizing that if they do not find a better way to use this data, the whole foray into information technology might go for little more than naught. That's where performance management "scorecard" systems come into play.

ADOBE, ITEMFIELD JOIN FORCES ON E-FORMS DEALItemfield, a San Mateo, Calif., provider of data transformation software, will work with San Jose-based Adobe Systems Inc., to develop a solution designed for the insurance industry. The companies plan to combine Adobe's intelligent forms, which support the ACORD XML data standard, with Itemfield's process-specific business rules and complex data transformation capabilities to help insurers increase efficiency by accelerating the processing of transactional data in electronic forms, such as quotations and new business submissions.

UNIVERSAL SIGNS SEVEN-YEAR BPO AGREEMENTUniversal Insurance of North America, Sarasota, Fla., has signed a seven-year agreement with CGI Group Inc. valued at between $45 and $75 million for policy and accounting business process services (BPS). Montreal-based CGI will process Universal's personal lines (book of business) including homeowners, dwelling-fire, auto, and umbrella in Texas and Florida. CGI will continue to support Universal's business processing needs as they expand their services into new markets. As part of this agreement, CGI will open a processing facility in Tampa to support Universal Insurance and other Florida-based insurance customers. CGI will initially hire 50 professionals and expects staff to grow to more than 200 professionals over the next two years.

Business rules have become a hot topic. At an industry event such as ACORD/LOMA, you'll hear many vendors talk about having business rules. We've all been here before; the buzz makes it hard for many of us to consider what we really need in those rules that help us automate processes such as claims and underwriting. Much of what we are struggling with is whether we should buy proprietary business rules capabilities that have been built into our applications, or if we should demand that our application vendors use enterprise-strength business rules solutions.Let's discuss the spectrum of what business rules can be. First, flexibility is important. At one extreme is the ability to change parameters, such as age, within the pre-defined rules for a given decision. At the other extreme are flexible solutions, where any new rule that relates to the problem can be added. The first is great when the rules are known, consistent and won't change. But, often the original application design doesn't consider industry, market and legal changes that cause us to have to define new rules we had not considered might be needed. As we have seen over the past 20 years, flexibility is critical to our ability to keep our application current.

Hamilton, Bermuda - Accenture Ltd. launched a technology delivery center in Pune, India, for software outsourcing and systems integration services. The facility is Accenture's ninth delivery center in India and represents further expansion of the company's Global Delivery Network.The new delivery center provides application outsourcing and systems integration services across the full range of technology capabilities. The center develops capabilities in enterprise technologies from Germany-based SAP and Siebel (Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif.); Net-centric technologies like Java and Microsoft; business intelligence and testing.

Durham, N.C. - The Insurance Accounting & Systems Association (IASA) reports that more than 125 insurance industry CFOs have registered to attend the 3rd Annual IASA - CFO Roundtable on Tuesday, June 6 in Boston. As part of IASA's Executive Education Program, the sessions to be presented have been designed to cater to the specific needs and interests of professionals in high-level insurance financial positions.

Boston, Mass. - Players in the global financial services industry must invest in innovation to drive competitive differentiation both with other financial institutions and adjacent industries - as well as to achieve bottom line results.