Pearl River, N. Y. - IBM is contributing more than 100 business-process models, model definitions and other industry content to the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), reports the non-profit standards organization. The models come from IBM's Insurance Application Architecture (IAA), the company's insurance business and IT architecture framework. The donation will accelerate the development and adoption of business-process standards that will help address some of the global insurance industry's greatest challenges.

Kansas City, Mo. - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) says that while the damages from Hurricane Katrina may set record losses, the property and casualty industry maintains the adequate capital and liquidity required to withstand claims arising from one of the most devastating natural disasters in U.S. history.

Nearly a year has passed since New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charged insurance brokerage firm Marsh & McLennan with rigging bids to maximize its commissions with insurance carriers.Allegations against Aon, AIG, ACE and other brokers and insurers followed-and within weeks, the country's largest insurance brokers-Marsh, Aon and Arthur J. Gallagher-as well as AIG and ACE had ceased the practice of accepting (or paying) contingent commissions.

The terrorist attacks that ripped through the heart of London last month provided a jarring wake-up call to American insurers.Even though the attacks, which killed 55 people and injured hundreds more, are expected to result in relatively modest liability exposure according to early estimates, insurers are taking notice.

The London bombings may have provided a wake-up call, but insurers could also be experiencing restless nights fretting over the fate of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) of 1992.The future of TRIA, a safety net that has provided some protection against the financial fallout from a terrorist event, is uncertain. The law, which was enacted in November of 2002 and is in effect until December 31, 2005, provides a federal financial backstop for the insurance industry for claims from certain terrorist attacks.

Insurers are better prepared to face the hurricane season this year, after the harsh 2004 season forced them to learn how to more effectively interpret the information they get from catastrophe (CAT) modeling systems, according to Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a Newark, Calif., provider of products and services for the management of catastrophe risk. At press time, RMS estimated that losses from Hurricane Dennis were likely to be between $1 and $3 billion.The two million claims produced from the 2004 season were a catalyst that encouraged companies to improve their understanding of the models, much like Hurricane Andrew in 1992 pushed catastrophe modeling into the mainstream, says Kyle Beatty, meteorologist with RMS.

March 2002: Upset about the size of his annual bonus, a global financial services employee planted a "logic bomb" that deleted 10 billion customer records. The incident affected more than 1,300 of the company's servers throughout the United States. The company sustained losses of approximately $3 million-the amount required to repair damage and reconstruct deleted files.

Imagine leaving your sales and marketing efforts to guesswork. Not understanding your customer's age, lifestyle, income or other factors would spell certain disaster for any insurance carrier trying to market or cross-sell specific products.Amica Life Insurance, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amica Mutual Insurance Company, is one company that decided to attack its marketing efforts with statistical intelligence.

The South African insurer has consolidated customer data from 15 disparate sources into one worksite marketing information system that provides a 360-degree view of its customers for its advisors.Talk to just about any insurance executive whose company embarked on a customer relationship management (CRM) initiative in the early 1990s and you'll likely hear a similar story. "Dirty data" often played a key role in the failure of those projects to deliver the expected results.

Insurance firms must perform more due diligence if they want their Web sites to net them greater revenues. That is one of the crucial messages of a recent study from Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based technology and market research firm, as a litany of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and a blur of technology offerings in the Web analytics field make insurers' search for the ideal vendor a murky proposition.The Forrester report, titled "How Web Analytics Buyers Structure Contracts," indicates that too many companies are rashly choosing vendors to tackle a very important element of their success strategies: maximizing their business on the Internet.

No single strategic objective in the insurance industry offers the profit potential of policyholder retention and cross-selling. It has been documented that multi-relationship policyholders are more likely to renew.Further, the cost to sell renewals and additional policies to current customers is dramatically less than initial customer acquisition costs.

Kansas City, Mo - The officers and members of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) have decided to cancel the Fall National Meeting, which was scheduled for September 10-13 in New Orleans. Approximately 1,500 insurance regulators, industry representatives and interested parties had registered to attend the conference.

Dublin, Ireland - The U.S. insurance industry has fully emerged from a rough patch at the early part of the decade, according to Research and Markets, a Dublin research firm. Both life and non-life carriers are currently experiencing a period of relative stability, and have reassessed their technology opportunities. In its report, which examines how U.S. insurance technology strategies have evolved over the past 18-24 months, Research and Markets asserts that claims processing will continue to be the focal point of IT spending for non-life insurers through 2008. Overall spending growth will moderate around 2007 as the bulk of costly system rationalization and standardization efforts will be either underway by then, says the firm.

New York - Hurricane Katrina is expected to be one of the costliest U.S. storms for insurers in history, but risk forecasters are not in total agreement about the extent of the damage.Insured losses from Katrina may total as much as $25 billion, say analysts. This tops the $20.9 billion bill from 1992's Hurricane Andrew, which set a record as the costliest U.S. storm.

Mayfield Village, Ohio - Progressive Direct is taking what it believes to be the next big step in the evolution of auto insurance pricing. The Mayfield Village, Ohio company is inviting its customers throughout the country to participate in a voluntary research program that will gather driving habit information.

Springfield, Mass. - In its latest effort to provide women with comprehensive financial education, MassMutual Financial Group is targeting females with an online financial seminar designed to help them assess their personal finances and develop a long-term financial strategy.

New York - U.S. insurers will turn more and more to professional services providers and consultants in developing, implementing and managing complex technology projects. That's according to a report by U.K.-based independent market analyst Datamonitor.According to the report, titled "U.S. Insurance Technology Strategies," for the first time (year end 2005), spending on external solutions will outpace that of internal IT spending.

Stamford, Conn. - Dennis Callahan, CIO, Guardian Life Insurance of America, has joined The BTM Institute's Global Leadership Council as the organization amends its name to The Michael Nobel Harriet Fulbright Institute of Business Technology Management.

Hartford, Conn. - Specialty Risk Services LLC (SRS), a property-casualty third party administrator for workers' compensation and general liability claims, is offering its clients access to a suite of tools to monitor their program's performance on its newly redesigned Web site.In SRS' password-protected Employer's Toolbox, clients have secure access to resources, including industry statistics, employee training materials, libraries of legislative and industry updates, loss control and safety tips, and links to national and industry Web sites.

Philadelphia - Cigna has introduced a new tool designed to allow companies to stay connected to employees during times of crisis. Travel Locator Service is a Web-based tool that combines worldwide medical and security intelligence with illness and accident medical coverage designed expressly for international business travelers. Philadelphia-based Cigna says the tool is available with its Medical Benefits Abroad service, and is designed to provide companies with employees abroad a detailed alert to quickly identify which employees are traveling on business and where -- pinpointing the exact whereabouts of traveling professionals down to country, city, and hotel location - so that employers can immediately communicate with traveling employees.