ANDOVER, Mass.-- CGI Group Inc. (CGI) announced the release of INSideOUT Version 9. INSideOUT's Version 9 offers significant value to customers by improving productivity and lowering maintenance costs.

PORTLAND, Ore-- Standard Insurance Company, a subsidiary of StanCorp Financial Group, Inc., has launched The Standard Advisor Partner, a new service model created to develop business partnerships between The Standard and third party administrators and pension consultants.

NEW YORK, Sept. 20--Total data storage-related industry revenues are expected to increase approximately 5% for full-year 2004, says Standard & Poor's Equity Research in a new, semiannual study of the industry.

CARLSBAD, Calif. and QUINCY, Mass., --Arbella Insurance Group, a property & casualty insurer, has chosen Document Sciences Corporation's ReadyForms as their enterprise document automation solution. ReadyForms provides a library of pre-built electronic bureau forms, complete with pre-defined business rules for automated forms assembly, and delivery via Document Sciences' xPression content processing technology.

PEARL RIVER, NY--At a September 8 ceremony in London, ACORD as presented with The Review Worldwide Reinsurance Industry Initiative of the Year Award for 2004. ACORD President and CEO, Gregory A. Maciag, accepted the award on behalf of ACORD's more than 480 members worldwide.

BATON ROUGE, La. - While Louisiana's new insurance high-risk pool hasn't had enough time to build up a financial cushion to absorb the potential effects of Hurricane Ivan, other reforms in place should enable insurers to pay ensuing claims.

When Jacksonville, Fla.-based Allstate Workplace Division, a provider of disability income, hospital indemnity, term and universal life and supplemental insurance products, developed an electronic worksite application called AllApp, the company went out to the field to build a consensus about how the application should be designed.

September 14, 2004 -MI-Assistant, a division of Fiserv FSC, Inc. announced today that independent insurance distributors in five Midwestern states are now writing auto insurance faster and more efficiently using a bridging system that connects MI Comparative rater, MI-Assistant's rating program with Safeco Insurance's Safeco Now online sales platform.

SAN FRANCISCO--Esurance, a direct-to-consumer personal auto insurance company, announced the launch of its new service powered by eStara, Inc. eStara's Push to Talk is a fully-hosted, Voice over the Internet (VoIP) "click to call" service, the most widely-deployed service of its kind in the world. The click to call feature allows Esurance customers to click a button to speak with an Esurance insurance advisor directly from Esurance's Web site, from PC-to-phone or through phone-to-phone calls.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Humana Inc. is taking full advantage of processing efficiencies from technology investments and changing market dynamics by naming Availity LLC its primary gateway for the submission of claims and encounters. Under this national arrangement, Humana is asking all of its major clearinghouses to send submissions destined for Humana through Availity.

ST. LOUIS--With 120-mile-per-hour winds and devastating force, Hurricane Charley ripped into the Alligator Mobile Home Park in Punta Gorda, Florida earlier in the month. If the destruction wasn't enough, just two weeks later Hurricane Frances hit Florida 's East coast with 100 mile-per-hour winds. RVs were overturned, belongings strewn for hundreds of yards, and in its wake, hundreds of RVers were left homeless and stranded, their lives threatened to come to a screeching halt.

When it comes to e-commerce, insurers have made a lot of progress over the past several years. They've equipped their employees with browser-based policy, claims, and customer service applications. They've developed self-service features for policyholders on their Web sites. And they've rolled out real-time transactions-such as quoting, policy issuance and inquiry-to their agents and brokers.But just as the insurance industry is embracing the Internet and increasingly harnessing its ability to improve productivity and operational efficiency, malicious attacks--which can bring down corporate networks and compromise confidential company and customer information--are growing exponentially.

Protecting clients against disasters may be the bread and butter of many insurance companies. But many carriers have only just begun to take a hard look at their own business continuity strategies, especially when it comes to information technology systems."Insurers are there to protect and indemnify individuals against disasters and unforeseen accidents, but they have not really invested as aggressively-or at least thought about it as much-as banks and financial services have done," observes Bill Pieroni, general manager for IBM Corp.'s global insurance industry practice.

The landmark outsourcing deal that Zurich Financial Services signed in July begs this question: Is outsourcing back in vogue, or is Zurich's situation unique?Insurance executives surely will scrutinize the results and ramifications of Zurich's seven-year, $1.3 billion application maintenance and development deal with CSC. For starters, the arrangement is expected to save Zurich $300 million over the seven-year period. But more importantly, executives will be keenly interested in how Zurich is able to execute its business strategy, now that responsibility for new application development is out of the hands of Zurich's IT staff.

When politicians earlier this year were taking pot shots at offshore outsourcing, some insurance industry experts suggested that the backlash could have a "chilling" effect on potential deals, at least in the near term.However, that notion was laid to rest with the announcement in July that Zurich Financial Services had agreed to a seven-year applications sourcing contract with Computer Sciences Corp.

Most laptop computer users remain bullish on this technology as a portable and user-friendly computing alternative, one that enhances productivity.No doubt, that notion-while true-is also relative. Material damage appraisers for Indianapolis-based Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance Co. once regarded 4.5-lb. standard-sized laptops as the best available tool to support their workflow efforts in handling auto insurance claims.

Fiserv Inc. has acquired Results International Systems, Inc., a provider of outsourced solutions for the property-and-casualty insurance industry.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Humana Inc. today announced the filing of applications for five patents in pharmacy and health metrics by its Innovation Center. All five of the patent applications are for Humana's use of innovative information technology applications to engage consumers in health benefits.

With boating season in full swing, Safeco has announced the launch of a new specialized claims unit dedicated to handling boaters' insurance claims.

COLUMBUS, Ohio-- Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., one of the country's largest property and casualty insurance companies, has received more than 22,000 claims in the past week for damages from Hurricane Charley. Overall, Nationwide estimates it will receive more than 50,000 claims and losses approaching $400 million.