According to a survey conducted by Fierce-Wireless-Bluefire Wireless Security this year, more than 80% of financial services respondents say their organization's use of handheld devices had increased over the past two years. Meanwhile, 87% say they are concerned about the security of e-mail access to corporate server-based accounts and of remote access to corporate networks, and 85% say that access to Web-based e-mail had become a significant security concern.

What do Carriers Need to Increase Market Share?

TOOL HELPS EMPLOYEES MANAGE THEIR BENEFITSPlanAdvisor, a benefits management tool from Milwaukee-based Zywave Inc., features a Plan Selector module to enable employees to review their own health costs. PlanAdvisor generates management reports without carrier data feeds, analyzes the effects of changes in the plan design and calculates projected plan costs, based on trend and claims information. It also offers benchmarking, modeling, and analysis to allow brokers to deliver information based on industry comparison data and actuarial factors, which can help clients make informed decisions.

Insurance Networking News asked John Del Santo, managing director for Accenture's Insurance Practice, to explain why some insurers are replacing core systems and others aren't.INN: Why are some insurers replacing their core systems?

Chinese insurance companies were bracing for an onslaught by global competitors last month when a commitment to the World Trade Organization dictated opening the borders to foreign competition."Almost all insurance business is opening to foreign insurers," says Xiaolin Li, a dean at Beijing-based Central University of Finance and Economics. "The exceptions are group insurance and life insurance, which requires a foreign insurance company to set up a joint venture with a local partner."

CAPITOL SELECTS STG BILLING SYSTEMMiddleton, Wis.-based Capitol Insurance Cos. chose Renaissance Billing Solution from New York-based Systems Task Group International Ltd.'s (STG) to support billing and accounts receivable operations. The system will replace Capitol's existing billing systems and will enable the consolidation, centralization and the streamlining of Capitol's cash management and accounting operations. It will provide Capitol with advanced technology support, flexibility and configurability.

The ability to launch products in record time and manage them over their entire lifecycle gives insurers a decisive advantage over competitors that can translate into increased revenue and above-average growth.So, how do insurers realize those benefits? They can begin by using "best practices" in three areas: organization, process and technology.

Boston - As helpful as technology can be, insurers are not immune to technology glitches. One such case, as reported by The Boston Globe, hit Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. The Boston-based insurer found itself sending out automated phone calls to Massachusetts senior citizens with Medicare drug benefits, asking them to repay up to $1,400 because the monthly premium automatic deduction from their Social Security checks failed to work.In March, The Tampa Tribune reported that hundreds of thousands of seniors received inaccurate Social Security payments because of problems with Medicare Part D drug coverage premiums, according to The Boston Globe. Most were overpaid because the premiums were not being deducted. Others received accidental refunds that averaged $215 and were asked to return the money.

Boston - Senior insurance IT executives are increasingly focusing on strategic spending to meet market demands and showing some concern over a softening property/casualty market, according to Celent LLC's new report, "Insurance CIO/CTO Pressures, Priorities, Projects, and Plans for 2007 Survey Results.""There is continued focus on meeting market demands for speed to market and ease of doing business, and on new projects involving core systems, data mastery, and distribution," says Matthew Josefowicz, manager of Celent's insurance group and author of the report. "Budgets and staffs are generally flat or growing modestly, but strategic investments continue. However, there are some indications that large property/casualty insurers may be keeping their powder dry until they can gauge the impact of the softening market."

Hartford, Conn. - Claims effectiveness is fast becoming a differentiating competitive feature among property/casualty companies as new measurement and process controls change the way claims are quantified, according to a new study by Hartford, Conn.-based Conning Research & Consulting Inc.The study, "Property-Casualty Claims Management: Unlocking Value" is based on a survey of senior property/casualty claims executives and on statutory data analysis. It examines changes in the insurance environment, and particularly in claims, including technology, staffing, outsourcing, regulatory and catastrophe issues.

Needham, Mass. - In 2007 and beyond, the global financial services industry will increasingly grapple with three major strategic shifts: reinventing financial services at its core; repurposing financial services relative to the global diversity of a changing customer base; and helping restore confidence in an uncertain world, according to a series of research reports from Needham, Mass.-based TowerGroup.The reports examine the top business drivers, strategic responses and technology priorities that will fuel core sectors of the global financial service industry in 2007.

El Segundo, Calif., - Insurers feel the need to develop original approaches to attracting and retaining customer in various market segments. During a two-day conference hosted by Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), a few insurers gave examples of these approaches.Panelists at the conference noted that insurance marketing programs must appeal to three distinct generational groups: Generation Y (ages 18-29), Generation X (ages 30-40) and baby boomers (ages 41-59). Each group has distinct demands for service; therefore, insurers must offer different Web-based services that address their consumers' varying levels of comfort with technology.

Blue Bell, Pa. - Almost one in every three of the more than 1,700 senior-level corporate and technology leader respondents in a new international survey do not trust their companies' own abilities to handle private or sensitive information, and that same number are either unsure or don't believe that most of their business partners consider them to be trusted enterprises.These and other findings are part of a broad research project from Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys Corp., called the Unisys Trusted Enterprise Index, a survey designed to measure the importance, impact and influence of trust, privacy and security within the corporate world. Conducted in partnership with the Ponemon Institute, an Elk Rapids, Mich.-based privacy research organization, the study also found that despite a growing awareness of risk management and security issues in the corporate world, more than one-third of companies polled do not task senior leaders with protecting the trust that customers, investors and even their own employees have in those companies.

Hartford, Conn. - Aetna Inc. is offering an interactive voice response (IVR) system called Voice2Form to enable members with both Aetna disability and medical insurance to provide consent to participate in the insurer's Integrated Health and Disability (IHD) program. Aetna's integrated informatics studies show that the IHD program may reduce short-term disability durations by as much as 10.7% or 5.6 days per claim.

Orlando - The latest release of ISO HomeValue, a residential replacement cost estimator, now allows personal lines insurers to assess catastrophe risk for individual properties using Boston-based AIR Worldwide Corp.'s (AIR) industry standard catastrophe models. The goal, says the companies, is to provide access to essential catastrophe risk data from a single web-based application, ISO HomeValue enables improved underwriting decisions. "After the large hurricane losses of 2004 and 2005, companies were reminded of the importance of assessing a property's catastrophe risk as part of the underwriting process," says George Davis, vice president at AIR. "However, most personal lines insurers have historically had very limited and inefficient ways to assess the catastrophe risk for individual properties. Now, ISO HomeValue provides residential underwriters with immediate catastrophe risk information at the individual property level in a seamless manner." By accessing AIR's catastrophe models from within ISO HomeValue, underwriters can generate real-time estimates of catastrophe risk, as characterized by the estimated average annual loss. Insurers can use this assessment of the catastrophe risk to automate, for example, simple issue/decline decisions, rating plan selection, and price adjustment under consent-to-rate procedures. ISO HomeValue captures a variety of property characteristics necessary for catastrophe modeling, including location, construction, building type, and year built. Additional property characteristics that may mitigate damage-such as storm shutters for hurricane risk-can also be entered to assess rate credits for such structures. In many cases, basic property data can be automatically pre-filled using the ISO PushPin database. ISO PushPin contains specific and detailed data on key building features for more than 50 million residential properties in the United States. Agents, underwriters, and inspectors can enter additional property information into ISO HomeValue to enhance the completeness of the data. "By employing ISO HomeValue to gather and maintain high quality property data, insurers can obtain more reliable estimates of an individual property's catastrophe loss potential, in addition to its replacement cost," continued Mr. Davis. Source: AIR Worldwide Corp.

Boston - Insurance carriers have invested heavily in project management, but large projects continue to fail. A new approach is required, according to a new report, “The 18 Month Rule: Avoiding the Endless Project.” The Boston-based insurance practice of research firm Celent LLC released the report this week as a guide to address the pitfalls of large IT projects.

New York - More than three-quarters (77%) of life insurance CFOs cite the growing level and complexity of regulations as their biggest concern for the market and economic environment in 2007, according to the latest CFO survey from the New York-based Tillinghast business of Towers Perrin. Interest rates were a close second, with 70% of respondents citing concerns about potential volatility in rates as a key challenge.

Minneapolis - Thanks to the combination of rules-based management and mobile healthcare technologies, patients with long-term health conditions may be on the road to a faster recovery based on receiving early detection, continuous remote care, prediction of care demands, and quality of life improvement.Swedish technology company Kiwok AB is integrating Blaze Advisor business rules management technology from Fair Isaac Corp., a Minneapolis provider of analytics and decision management technologies, to enable intelligent out-of-hospital monitoring of patients via Kiwok's mobile healthcare monitoring network.

Waltham, Mass. - Results of a study analyzing the actual compliance-training records of more than 2.5 million employees (working at approximately 350 companies) who completed online ethics and compliance courses cite financial integrity as the respondents' number-one compliance issue. Insurers represented 10 of 350 companies studied, or roughly 153,000 employees, notes study author Integrity Interactive, a Waltham, Mass., provider of Web-based tools for managing and mitigating corporate ethics and compliance risk. The study reveals the top-12 ethics and compliance training topics addressed by major companies in 2006. Leading corporations have begun to address compliance risks proactively instead of waiting to react after problems arise, say the findings. The Integrity Interactive study quantifies which ethical violations companies fear most, identifies emerging compliance risk-management trends, and provides concrete examples of how top compliance-training topics map to corporate governance scandals dominating business headlines today. Financial integrity is the top compliance-training topic covered by major corporations today. Financial integrity has been among the Top-3 most-popular course topics every year since 2000, and also tops the most-popular list for the present decade, reflecting the persistent determination of many companies to proactively prevent compliance violations such as backdated stock options and inaccurate financial reports. Proper use of computers ranks second on the list of ethics and compliance topics, reflecting the desire of companies to protect their leaders, employees, and themselves from embarrassing, inappropriate, or even illegal uses of computers, the Internet, instant messaging and related information technologies. Four new concerns surfaced in the study: Sarbanes-Oxley & internal controls (ranked #6) and data safeguarding (ranked #8) appear in the top-12 list for the first time. The popularity of these course topics reflects corporate efforts to respond to important legislation adopted in recent years at the national and state levels. Human rights (ranked #10) and privacy (ranked #12): These two also appear on the top-12 list for the first time and constitute powerful evidence of senior management's desire to respond to broader values-based concerns gaining traction in society as a whole. Another aspect of the study revealed that company size influences risk-management priorities. Very large corporations (90,000+ employees) have made financial integrity their leading priority. Large (10,000+ to 90,000 employees) and mid-sized (1,000 to 10,000 employees) companies cite mutual respect as their top priority (closely followed by proper use of computers). And mutual respect appears among the top-3 most-popular training priorities for companies in all size buckets (mid-sized, large and very large). The near-universal applicability of the mutual respect course explains its popularity with companies of different sizes. Antitrust (a risk-area of particular concern to sales and marketing personnel) is another compliance-training topic popular with companies of all sizes. Source: Integrity Interactive Inc.

Springfield, Mass. - Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), Springfield, Mass., is setting a best practice example that may not have a technology angle or result in increased premium revenue, but it has a long-term business benefit just the same. The company is bringing its LifeBridge Free Life Insurance Program to the Tucson, Arizona area. MassMutual's LifeBridge is a national philanthropic program in which the company issues 10-year term life insurance policies to eligible working parents to help pay for the cost of their children's education in the event they die. Through LifeBridge, $50,000 life insurance policies are issued to a trust on the life of qualifying parents or legal guardians to help pay for the education of their eligible children who -- in the event of a parent's death during the policy's term -- may not be able to afford to complete their schooling. All premiums are paid entirely by MassMutual, with no fees for qualified parents or their children. MassMutual has provided more than 5,800 10-year term life insurance policies since launching the now popular LifeBridge program in 2002, representing more than $290 million in free life insurance coverage. Louise Orozco, CLU, of Generational Wealth Strategies, LLC, a MassMutual Agent based in Tucson, teamed up with the Women's Foundation of Southern Arizona to offer the LifeBridge Program to eligible families. "We are extremely excited to bring LifeBridge to the Tucson area," says Louise Orozco. "We want to help ensure that access to educational opportunities exists for children of working families and not just those who are lucky enough to have parents with adequate financial means. There is absolutely no cost to the insured for a policy under the LifeBridge program." To be eligible to apply for a term life insurance policy under the LifeBridge program, applicants must be: * Between the ages of 19-42; * A permanent, legal U.S. resident; * The parent or legal guardian of one or more dependent children under the age of 18; * Currently employed -- either full- or part-time -- and have a family income between $10,000 and $40,000 on their most recent income tax return; * The only family member who has applied for the LifeBridge program; and * In good health, as determined by MassMutual's underwriting guidelines. The money will be paid to a trust administered by The MassMutual Trust Company, FSB on behalf of the children. The trust will pay the educational expenses of the children directly to the educational institution they attend. Various types of schools qualify, including, but not limited to, pre- school, private school, vocational school, community college, universities, art and music schools or graduate schools. Some of the educational expenses covered include books, tuition, and room and board. Source: MassMutual