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News & Commentary
Content posted in July 2007
Chubb Impresses With CAT Response
News  |  7/31/2007  | 
Warren, N.J.-based Chubb Group of Insurance Companies ($14 billion in revenue, 2006) is the latest carrier to tout its CAT response capabilities. Last week, the insurer announced that 95-percent of its insurance customers affected by strong April storms in the Northeast United States were "very satisfied" with how their claims were handled, according to a survey.
Spitzer Schadenfreude
News  |  7/31/2007  | 
Critics of Eliot Spitzer have had the pleasure of watching the former New York Attorney General and now Governor get a dose of his own medicine.
CFO Survey: Finance Transformation needed
News  |  7/31/2007  | 
A changing industry is driving the transformation of the finance function within insurance companies and financial services in general, as companies seek to cut operating costs and improve revenue in an effort to achieve greater profitability and return on equity. But the proximate drivers of and key tools to achieve that transformation are technology related, according to a BearingPoint study.
IronKey Offers Secure USB Flash Drive
News  |  7/30/2007  | 
LOS ALTOS, CALIF. - IRONKEY has launched the IronKey Secure Flash Drive with Internet Protection Services, a secure USB flash drive that protects the gigabytes of information stored within it using onboard hardware encryption, helping insurers and other organizations meet regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. IronKey also features portable secure web surfing via an onboard Firefox web browser with Tor technology, a tamperproof
DTRIC Leverages DRC DecisionMaker
News  |  7/27/2007  | 
DTRIC Insurance Company (Honolulu) has selected Honolulu-based DRC's DecisionMaker extended lines policy administration system to process its newly expanded commercial insurance lines of business.
Workforce Safety & Insurance (WSI) Selects Valley Oak
News  |  7/27/2007  | 
Workforce Safety & Insurance (Bismarck, N.D.), the exclusive workers' compensation carrier in North Dakota, has selected San Ramon, Calif.-based Valley Oak Systems' flagship iVOS solution as its new workers' compensation system.
Dean Health Signs With EDS
News  |  7/27/2007  | 
Dean Health Insurance (Madison, Wis.) will implement Plano, Texas-based EDS' MetaVance Adminstration and Finance System, a highly scalable system featuring a service-oriented architecture that is designed to automate core administrative processes such as enrollment, provider management and claims processing.
Primavera 6.0 Released
News  |  7/27/2007  | 
Bala Cynwyd, Pa. - Primavera Systems has released Primavera 6.0 (P6), a new version of its flagship enterprise project and program management software. Part of a solutions suite for project-driven organizations, P6 will feature fully web-based capabilities, interactive Gantt charts and screen layouts, dashboards, advanced management capabilities, extended reporting and analytics, enterprise integration with SAP and risk manage
Hyland and Sapiens Partner
News  |  7/27/2007  | 
Hyland Software (Cleveland) has announced it will partner with Sapiens International (Research Triangle Park, N.C.) to provide insurance clients with tighter integration between Sapiens INSIGHT, a Web-based insurance administration suite and Hyland's OnBase ECM software suite.
Phoenix Indemnity Selects TEAM-UP
News  |  7/26/2007  | 
Phoenix Indemnity Insurance Company (Dallas) will license and implement Connective Technologies' (Houston) TEAM-UP Download application to provide once-and-done processing in an industry-compliant, data-secure environment for agency downloads.
The Missing Opinion
News  |  7/25/2007  | 
The other day I received an e-mail invite to a webinar, "SOA & the Insurance Industry: Voice of the Experts." The event was organized by InfoWorld, and included speakers from the TowerGroup, BEA, and Zurich Financial Services. Naturally, my interest was piqued.
Does Ergonomics Matter?
News  |  7/24/2007  | 
By Nathan Conz Because I'm Insurance & Technology's "new products czar" (a title-bump that will be news to my editors when they read this entry), a lot of technology solutions come across my desk every day. Until very recently however, none of those products were also, in fact, about my desk.
Actuaries Adopt New Risk-Modeling Technologies
News  |  7/24/2007  | 
As the U.S. insurance industry moves toward principle-based reserving to demonstrate capital adequacy, actuaries are collaborating with their IT departments to adopt more-sophisticated risk-modeling technologies.
CSE Insurance Group Selects ISO HomeValue Cost Estimator
News  |  7/17/2007  | 
Looking to update its cost estimator platform while it builds new business quoting software, Civil Service Employees (CSE) Insurance Group ($126.1 million in gross written premium) selected ISO HomeValue to help agents estimate the costs to re-build a property in the event of a total loss.
Summer of Change at MetLife, State Farm, The Hartford
News  |  7/17/2007  | 
Before the industrial revolution, summer tended to be the time for campaigning -- the military kind, not the political kind which now lasts multiple years, let alone seasons -- and intense agricultural activity. No doubt the farmers are still on a more demanding schedule this time of year, but when it comes to the insurance industry, summer is a time of relative repose. It doesn't rival the last couple of weeks in the year for quiet, but with the spring trade show cycle past and vacations deplet
The Evolution of Personal Health Records
News  |  7/17/2007  | 
Although a valuable asset for any individual health insurer, Personal Health Records real future depends on industry-wide collaboration.
Vector Acquisition Deepens MajescoMastek's American Footprint
News  |  7/16/2007  | 
The announcement on July 17th that MajescoMastek has acquired Vector Insurance Services is further evidence that the Indian parent company Mastek is working hard to find a place at the North American insurance technology vendor table.
Virtualization: Does It Have A Positive Impact On Insurance Operations?
News  |  7/16/2007  | 
By optimizing computing resources, virtualization can lower infrastructure operating costs while improving business agility and speed to market.
Insurers Finding Multiple Ways To Accelerate The Product Development Process
News  |  7/13/2007  | 
Insurers like Nationwide, ICAT and Aegon Direct Marketing Services are discovering new and innovative methods to accelerate their product development processes. Along the way, they are finding that speed and quality aren't mutually exclusive.
Penn Millers Selects ImageRight To Reduce Paper-Based Processes
News  |  7/13/2007  | 
Looking to facilitate premium growth, Penn Millers selects ImageRight to reduce paper-based processes.
Safeco Insurance Launches Teensurance Program
News  |  7/13/2007  | 
The Safeco Teensurance program will help parents to keep tabs on their teens' driving habits, using a GPS device from Seaguard Electronics.
Insurance Call Centers Lag Behind Other Industries, But The Hartford Is a Diamond in the Rough
News  |  7/11/2007  | 
The Hartford sets call center best practices for the insurance industry, which performed poorly overall in a recent customer satisfaction study by CFI Group.
Arbella Enables e-Submission
News  |  7/11/2007  | 
Boston-based Arbella Insurance taps AgencyPort agent/carrier interface products to move from hard-copy to paperless policy submissions.
The Hartford’s ExpressWay Speeds Small Commercial Business
News  |  7/11/2007  | 
The Hartford Financial Services Group's new platform lets agents import data from leading agency management systems, avoiding the need to re-key information needed to quote and place business.
AXA Distributors Enhances Producer Portal
News  |  7/11/2007  | 
AXA Distributors boosts the security, access control and utility of its producer portal.
Insurance Companies’ IT Strategies Will Be Influenced By Understanding of Climate Change’s Effects
Commentary  |  7/11/2007  | 
Financial institutions such as Allianz and HSBC are taking the lead in adopting business strategies that address climate change. This will affect the technology investment decisions made by insurance IT organizations.
MetLife Names Blakeman Individual Business CIO
News  |  7/11/2007  | 
Larry Blakeman has moved from being CIO of MetLife Auto & Home to the CIO role for the carrier's Individual Business division, in the wake of former Individual Business CIO Jeff Stoll's retirement.
MetLife's Jeff Stoll Retires
News  |  7/11/2007  | 
Jeff Stoll has retired from his job as CIO of Individual Business (IB) at MetLife. Larry Blakeman has moved from his role as CIO of MetLife Auto & Home to take on the IB CIO job. In a phone conversation Stoll said that he was tired and that it was time for a change, so he decided to take some personal time.
London & Glasgow: The World Gets Riskier
News  |  7/3/2007  | 
With every risk comes an opportunity for the insurance industry, which is another way of saying it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. That's small recompense for living in a world where cruel fanatics are increasingly driven to attack civilians - men, women and children - for the sake of their perverse beliefs.
Deloitte Study Highlights Offshoring Boom in Financial Services
News  |  7/3/2007  | 
Financial services companies have expanded offshore delivery functions 18-fold over the last four years, according to a recently released report for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Yet while the insurance industry is in-step with its FS brethren in some areas of offshoring, in others it still lags behind, says the author of the report.
Delta Delivers Web-Based Self-Service Reports
News  |  7/3/2007  | 
As part of its strategic effort to distinguish itself in the extremely competitive Chicago market through Web-oriented customer service, Delta Dental of Illinois (DDIL, Lisle, Ill.; about $400 million in premium) has launched self-service reports to group benefit administrator users of its employer portal. The Business Objects XI ap


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