Washington, D.C. - There is a clear economic case for structural changes in insurance regulation, namely an optional federal charter (OFC), that could benefit both consumers and life insurers, according to a study conducted by the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), Washington, D.C., and Computer Sciences Corporation, El Segundo, Calif.

Northbrook, Ill.--Allstate Life Insurance Co., a subsidiary of The Allstate Corp., is participating in the PREPARE (PREVU* Predicts Atherosclerosis Risk and Events) clinical trial, a study with Toronto-based IMI International Medical Innovations Inc. and McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Guelph, Ont. The study evaluates a new medical technology for assessing the risk of coronary artery disease.Currently, Allstate Life customers who apply for a life insurance policy must undergo a blood test as one of a number of factors to assess their coronary artery disease risk. The new study incorporates a skin test that uses an adhesive collection strip that is applied to a study participant's hand. Upon removal of the strip, dead skin cells are collected and then sealed in a collection device and processed using IMI's patented PREVU* LT Skin Sterol Test system.

Green Bay, Wis. - Amex Assurance Company, a subsidiary of the American Express Property Casualty companies, is selling policies to New Jersey drivers directly over the Internet. The Green Bay, Wis., company has sold property/casualty insurance since 1986 and writes auto insurance in 38 states and Washington, D.C. It's the fourth new firm, following Mercury General, GEICO and Esurance, to enter the auto insurance market since legislative reform began two years ago in what is called one of the most heavily regulated states.

In a perfect world, maintaining IT assets would entail faultless consistency: reliable hardware, software and support services, a trusted team in place that would optimize integration and functionality through each asset's lifecycle, and the chairman of the board's slap on the back for bringing IT spending in-once again-under budget.Dennis Callahan, CIO of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, knows that there is no such thing as a "perfect world." He might even go so far as to say that the only consistent thing in life is change. Callahan just wants to make sure that Guardian Life's IT asset management initiative represents positive change for the 145 year-old New York-based mutual life insurance company.

The decision to send IT operations overseas is often viewed in the pejorative by IT line personnel, who feel they must continuously "skill up" or face the unemployment line. Though carriers are often reluctant to publicize their strategies, sources indicate it's definitely a topic of executives' conversation.IT offshore outsourcing, i.e., offshoring, has intensified, and from a business driver perspective, its discussion is becoming more commonplace in the boardroom, where it holds less controversy.

Do the numbers 705/4 mean anything to you? What about the name Ronald Katz? If not, you may want to pay more attention to what's happening in the patent world.The numbers 705/4 represent the U.S. Patent Office classification for insurance inventions. And, according to industry sources, carriers are woefully oblivious to the spike in patents filed under that classification over the past few years.

A survey conducted by AIIM, a Silver Spring, Md., enterprise content management (ECM) association, reveals that while cost reduction is still dominant in driving ECM decisions, compliance and payback are growing in popularity.AIIM surveyed more than 1,200 end users and potential end users of content and document management technologies in nine countries: the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Germany, Australia, and the Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg).

In one corner, a number of professional organizations support federal regulation of the insurance industry. And, on the opposite side of the ring, other groups support state oversight. The debate over state and federal regulatory control seems to have resurfaced, and a host of parties affected are gearing up for the battle.Some insurance carriers, however, are asking: Does it really matter who's standing when all is said and done? Many insurers simply recognize that there is a need for regulatory reform -and where that control lies is of secondary concern, according to Dick Luedke, spokesperson for State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., Bloomington, Ill.

Computers are supposed to shorten or take over routine tasks for us, freeing human brains and hands for creative projects beyond the capabilities of machinery. Frequently, however, users find themselves at the mercy of their mainframes, desktops and laptops, performing repetitive input chores and time-consuming database maintenance functions. Now, a technology that takes advantage of automated Internet resources is allowing carriers to skip the middlemen and take the data directly where it needs to go - the agent and the consumer - without costly delays.Being able to use this type of technology to streamline the release of new products and reduce the time it takes to announce changes in a product's pricing structure is a growing need faced by most carriers. Such was the concern of Electric Insurance Company (EIC), a Beverly, Mass., carrier whose roots date to 1966 when it provided insurance for employees of General Electric. Today EIC, licensed in all 50 states, has expanded its P&C direct-to-customer rates to the general public.

In the late 1990s, when insurance firms were running high loss ratios (from 110 to 130), Lombard Canada Ltd., one of the oldest property and casualty insurance operations in Ontario, hired a consulting firm to assess its underwriting and claims leakage while it sought to improve IT and drive down expenses.With the firm's help, Lombard's loss ratio started dropping. While other Canadian firms were still grappling with hefty loss ratios, Lombard moved on to major technological decisions.

Since the beginning of the decade, it's been pedal to the metal for AAA Life Insurance Co.. The organization, which offers term and universal life products, fixed annuities, and travel accident insurance to AAA members, has grown from 75 employees in 1999 to a staff of 400, supporting more than 800,000 customers and more than $1.1 billion in assets.As AAA Life's business began to accelerate at breathtaking speed, the organization's managers began to see some treacherous bumps and obstacles on the road ahead. The company lacked an enterprisewide system for watching and managing costs within the various business units. With relentless hiring and increasing costs of doing business, managers needed a clear, single view of where more gas needed to be applied to boost business, and where the brakes needed to be applied to curb spending.

New York - More than 90% of risk management executives are building or want to build enterprise risk management (ERM) processes into their organizations, but only 11% have completed such a task, according to a recent report issued by New York-based The Conference Board. The Board, in conjunction with Mercer Oliver Wyman, a New York financial consulting firm, surveyed 271 risk management executives from a variety of industries across North America and Europe.

Avon, Conn. - Worksite carriers recorded another year of reserved growth in 2004, according to the sixth annual U.S. Worksite Study, conducted by marketing advisory firm Eastbridge Consulting Group, Inc., Avon, Conn. New worksite sales in the U.S. totaled an estimated $4.223 billion, a 3% increase over 2003 results. Growth improved from the 1.8% increase realized in 2003 (based on revisions several companies made to their reported 2003 sales). [Note: As a result of these revisions, total sales for 2003 were revised downward to $4.1 billion.]

Needham, Mass. - U.S. insurers may face a tough road to better aligning business processes, data, and content to help to drive more profitable, competitive, and differentiated services for growth, but as insurers advance their capabilities, the demands for straight-through processing will drive them toward more open business architectures that will help produce reusable assets, services, and business modules.

Chicago - Agents are being introduced to an e-mail autoresponder that automatically includes complete health insurance quotes to prospective customers and allows continuous flow of e-mails to prospects over a specified timeframe. Norvax, a Chicago developer of Web-based sales and customer communications tools, has released its LeadMiner tool in three versions - Basic, Pro and Marketer. Each version enables agents to automatically e-mail messages customized with their own information on a regular basis at intervals specified by the agent, automatically send HTML and text e-mails with instant, integrated health insurance quotes, and automatically add updated health insurance quotes to scheduled e-mails sent after the initial contact.

Alexandria, Va.--Five top insurance industry leaders will participate in a CEO panel discussion during the opening session of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America's (Big "I") Convention in New York.CEOs participating as panelists for the discussion are: Frederick H. Eppinger, CEO, Allmerica Financial Corp.; Robert J. Joyce, chairman and CEO, Westfield Group; Charles M. Kavitzky, president and CEO, Fireman's Fund; Axel P. Lehmann, CEO, Zurich North America Commercial; and William J. Mullaney, president, MetLife Auto & Home.

Princeton, N.J. -- American Re-Insurance Co. was named "Best Overall Reinsurer in the U.S." in the 2005 survey of cedant perceptions about reinsurance and reinsurers conducted by Flaspohler Research Group, a Kansas City, Mo.-based business-to-business research. American Re received the same recognition in 2003, the last time this survey was conducted."We are enormously proud of the results of the Flaspohler Survey. Retaining our No. 1 ranking in the "best overall reinsurer" category clearly demonstrates that we continue to be judged as the best reinsurer in this market by our clients - by far the most important arbiters of our performance," said John Phelan, Chairman and CEO of American Re-Insurance Co.

Boston - Although its financial services sector is still small compared to the United States, Europe, or Japan, China's rapid growth rates and huge potential make it a critical arena for expansion for both insurers and solution providers, according to Celent Communications. In its latest report, Insurance in China: Market and IT Overview, Celent predicts IT spending by insurers in China will jump from $2 billion in 2005 to more than $5 billion in 2009.

Washingon, D. C. - Members of the PIA Insurance Technology Coalition met with Congressional staffers on Capitol this week to discuss data security/identity theft and its potential effect on the insurance industry.

Chapel Hill, N.C. - Yankelovich Inc., has unveiled a tool that links the attitudes of individual consumers to insurance industry-specific product behaviors. The tool, Attitudes in Action, enables marketers to tailor their messages to a specific individual's wants and needs and tailor their offers to attitudes linked to individual names and addresses. These insurance-specific attitudes can be used for selecting target lists and performing database enhancements, thereby improving marketing productivity through higher response rates and reduced costs.