Each year, insurers identify the flexible, non-proprietary and enterprisewide benefits of Web services, although insurers continue to cite three prevailing reasons to table e-services investments for another day. These reasons include reliance on multiple legacy system operating environments, security issues and overall costs.In a survey of 132 property/casualty insurers conducted in October, Troy, N.Y.-based MapInfo Inc., a global provider of location-based geo-spatial software solutions, determined that there's been increased adoption of Web services and integration technology. The survey was largely targeted to IT managers and senior-level executives.

Until recently, grid computing was the domain of high-performance computing sites that calculate petabytes of data for particle physics problems or modeled engineering simulations. Now, grid computing is going mainstream, opening up new possibilities for carriers looking to support their growing application portfolios while keeping a lid on information technology budgets.By distributing processing workloads across networks of already existing computers, companies can attain higher performance processing power for relatively little additional investment.

Cedar Rapids--Fiserv Insurance Solutions, a unit of Fiserv, Inc. and an innovative solutions provider for the insurance industry, announced availability of the 1.2 version of Fiserv Advanced Billing, a Web-based system utilizing the J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) platform.

NEW YORK-- A poll of attendees at The Conference Group's 16th Annual Executive Conference for the Property-Casualty Industry has found that executives expect changes in the brokerage and regulatory models to have fundamental and long-lasting effects on the industry, including downward pressure on industry compensation, with pricing likely to increase.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--Computer Sciences Corporation

BOSTON--Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) has purchased the Interwoven Enterprise Web Change Management solution, powered by Interwoven OpenDeploy, to enable faster, accurate and cost-effective synchronization of a disaster recovery site for its member and provider Websites. BCBSMA also purchased the Interwoven Self-Service solution to maintain fresh, personalized content on its Provider Portal.

PORTSMOUTH, NH--Bottomline Technologies today announced the expansion of the company's financial Business Process Management (fBPM) solutions. These fBPM solutions are designed to streamline paper-driven order-to-cash and purchase-to pay processes -- enabling organizations to more effectively manage their financial assets and trading partner relationships.

Newark, Calif.--Risk Management Solutions (RMS), the world's leading provider of products and services for the management of catastrophe risk, today announced that it provided the risk analysis for a securitization of U.S. hurricane and earthquake risk by The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.

Seattle--Safeco announced it is once again expanding the product breadth available on its single-platform online sales center Safeco Now. In a breakthrough move for small-business insurance sales, the company has introduced functionality allowing independent distributors to quote and issue commercial multi-peril (CMP) policies in as little as five minutes.

One problem facing insurers who write commercial automobile coverage is that in states with mandatory auto liability reporting, also known as ALIR, carriers must report policy changes and cancellations electronically to state Dept. of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

Exstream Software Inc., Lexington, Ky., announced today an agreement with Kanematsu Electronics Ltd. (KEL) in Tokyo to market the company's products in Japan. Under the terms of the agreement, KEL will offer Dialogue, WebVerse, AFP Studio and future Exstream products as part of its solution set for managing document information infrastructures. Exstream chose Kanematsu for its strong customer relationships in the Japanese market, specifically in the mail order, insurance, security, credit card and utility industries, the company stated.

New York, NY--MetLife announced that it's online employee benefits management portal, MetLink, received the 2004 E-Fusion award for Customer Service and Benefits Management. This prominent industry award, presented at the AM Best Insurance and Technology Conference, is awarded to insurance companies and their affiliates for outstanding, resourceful uses of technology in the insurance industry.

The incentive of insurers to explore online learning, beside the low travel costs and reduction of lost agent and employee productivity, is the fact that carriers can turn around training relatively quickly. This is essential with so many new products, regulatory compliance requirements and other liability issues nipping at their heels.

Nothing tests the resolve of an insurance company's claims processing division more dramatically than a natural catastrophe.Typically, one natural disaster is enough to test the capabilities of the most competent claims units, but when four hurricanes struck the Southeast during a six-week period between August 13 and late September, it proved to be an unprecedented succession of disasters, insurers concur.

Y2K brought the issue of IT assets to the executive table. To prevent the collapse of their operations when the clocks struck midnight on December 31, 1999, companies worked furiously to find out what computer hardware and software they were using, whether or not their systems were Y2K-compliant, and if they weren't, how to fix them.Five years later, companies are still struggling to get their arms around their infrastructures. Now, the Internet is ubiquitous and real-time system availability is expected. Multi-tired platforms with highly distributed IT assets are the norm-especially in larger companies. And, regulations-such as SOX, HIPAA, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley-are forcing executives to take personal responsibility for financial statements and customer privacy-information housed in their IT systems.

As it pertains to information technology strategies, life insurers are regarded by many industry experts as trailing their counterparts in the property/casualty and even health insurance sector.But when Waterloo, Ont.-based Manulife Financial of Canada in September announced plans to partner with CGI Group on a $100 million IT application outsourcing initiative, it presented further evidence that life insurance companies might be collectively poised to make a bolder commitment to IT strategy.

Reducing costs and stimulating corporate growth can be a tough proposition for insurance companies. Often, reducing costs only serves to inhibit growth as a reduction in spending undermines targeted growth areas.A new study released by three insurance industry technology providers delves into the challenge life and annuity insurers are facing as they strive to remove costs from the equation while ensuring corporate prosperity, as defined by profitability.

Insurance companies that have learned to use technology to become information users rather than information gatherers have a decisive competitive advantage over their peers. But few insurance companies have "turned that corner."This is the assessment of John Bareiss, senior director at Fitch Ratings, New York. Fitch and Pearl River, N.Y.-based ACORD recently released a strategic briefing to provide insight into how the rating agency evaluates the technological capabilities of insurance companies, reinsurers and intermediaries.

With the stakes--and their IT investments--high, many insurers have made it clear they aren't ready, willing or able to discard their legacy systems and migrate their applications completely to newer platforms.

When you're running an insurance company with a business model based on Internet distribution, you need to develop a top-notch Web site. That was management's goal when online insurer Esurance Inc. was launched in 2001 at the height of the dot-com bubble, and that's still the company's intention today.Esurance has implemented two new Web technologies over the past year to keep its Web site running smoothly and enable customers to effortlessly contact a service representative when they encounter a problem.