Having suffered five of the top ten deadliest natural disasters in history, with recent events affecting over 70 percent of its land area and more than half its population, China presents ongoing challenges to the insurance market. According to a new market report released by Aon Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary of Aon Corp., these and other challenges are complex and amplified by the scale of the market and the speed of its development.

A.M. Best's recent catastrophe-related loss estimates reveal a bad first nine months of 2011 for U.S. P&C insurers. According to the agency's briefing “U.S. Property/Casualty Catastrophe Losses Climb to $38.6 Billion for the First Nine Months of 2011,” the estimated total net pretax accident-year catastrophe-related losses were $38.6 billion, up $22.5 billion (140 percent), from an estimated $16.1 billion reported during the same period a year ago.

CGI Federal Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Canada-based CGI Group, announced that it has been awarded a $93.7 million contract by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) to build the U.S. government’s federal health insurance exchange.

One-third of office-based physicians have a "basic" electronic health records or electronic medical records system, according to preliminary figures from the federal 2011 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.

Even though they know it’s dangerous and, depending where they are, against the law, drivers continue to text behind the wheel, and Allstate Insurance Co. and Manitoba Public Insurance are doing their part to put an end to it.

Property/casualty insurers may well be relieved that the 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season officially ended this week. This year, the season counted 19 tropical storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes (Category 3 or above on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) resulting in insurance claims.

Mobile devices and network capabilities will lead growth areas in IT and information management in 2012, with cloud services adoption and enablement not far behind, according to IDC’s annual market predictions.

To fully exploit business analytics, carriers must supplement their internal policy-level data with a variety of data points derived from external sources. To get a sense of how insurers can best harmonize exogenous data with existing business processes, Insurance Networking News checked in with Bill Madison, SVP insurance data solutions for Lexis/Nexis.

1. Risk Management/ Climate Control

With the onslaught of Big Data and more sophisticated business intelligence and analytics, data quality will be more important than ever to insurers in 2012. The experts say you can't get there without clean, accessible data. Poor contact data affects a variety of operations, from underwriting to policy service. But from a cost perspective, inaccurate contact data can have a significant impact on insurers. In a September 2011 report "Why is Data Quality Important for Insurers?" Deloitte lists four reasons:

Life insurers need to craft mitigation strategies for a prolonged low-rate environment.

Fraud is on the rise in the United States and globally, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’s 2011 Global Economic Crime Survey, with cyber crime making the most significant increase in the two years since the firm’s last survey.

Commercial lines carriers focused on risk mitigation tied to business continuity have reason for additional concern. According to a newly published survey, 85 percent of companies reported at least one supply chain disruption over the last 12 months, with 40 percent of analyzed disruption originating below the immediate supplier. The survey, sponsored by Zurich Financial Services Group (Zurich) and conducted by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Caversham, United Kingdom, queried companies from across 62 countries.

Glatfelter Insurance Group, a multifaceted insurance broker and MGA/program manager, and SPARTA Insurance Co., a property/casualty carrier dedicated to writing program business with Program Administrators as well as retail agents, share few things in common.

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services has released the latest version of its ARC Logics for Financial Services offering. The enterprise risk management (ERM) solution suite draws upon actionable, industry-specific regulatory intelligence and Wolters Kluwer Financial Services’ domain expertise. Wolters says this helps financial organizations bring transparency, traceability and efficiency to managing compliance, operational and financial risks as well as to the audit function.

Society Insurance, a provider of workers’ compensation insurance, has selected CSC’s comprehensive legal management software, Legal Solutions Suite, as a Software as a Service (SaaS). Society will access the CSC-hosted offering online to improve consistency in legal matter planning and bill review.

A comparison of third-quarter data from 2009, 2010 and 2011 reveals a notable increase in the number of questionable claims submitted, according to a new report issued by the National Insurance Crime Bureau, Des Plaines, Ill. In its third-quarter 2011 questionable claims (QC) referral reason analysis, the Bureau examined six referral reason categories of claims—property, casualty, commercial, workers' compensation, vehicle and miscellaneous—for the quarters listed above.

A recent study of IT spending among small businesses (from $40 million to $350 million in annual revenue) reveals that the budgets will grow slowly. The report—“IT spending and staffing forecast for 2012”— from Computer Economics predicts IT operational budgets should grow about 2.0 percent at the median for small organizations and 0.5 percent for medium ($350 million to $1 billion in revenue) and 0.8 percent for large (revenue of $1 billion or greater) organizations. Growth in the financial services sector, including banks and insurance companies, is weaker than other sectors—health care, professional and technical services, and distribution and manufacturing—but the net trend is still positive.

Aviva Canada Inc., a P&C insurance group, has chosen communic8 as its broker integration hub. The iter8 connectivity hub product will expand its presence within the insurer's IT infrastructure to include uploads from multiple broker management and bridge systems, enabling a one-and-done broker workflow.

It’s no secret that the Green Bay Packers are chasing perfection this season. But what many might not know is that they are quietly leveraging their success to help bring health tips to fourth grade classrooms across the state of Wisconsin.