Delivery Strategies Briefs

--> The Hartford Financial Services Group is moving forward with standards-based single entry of commercial lines scheduled items; --> NaviSys institutes a new pricing structure for its Web-based Front Office for life and annuity order entry; --> The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and AnnuityNet, Inc., link Merrill Lynch's insurance brokers with insurance carriers...

In an effort to improve ease of business with agents and brokers, The Hartford Financial Services Group (Hartford) is moving forward with standards-based single entry of commercial lines scheduled items. The insurer says it accepts exposure schedules in an XML transaction based on the ACORD (Pearl River, NY) XML large commercial standards. The Hartford is now also able to populate these XML transactions with data extracted from Excel spreadsheets or directly accept XML streams from partners. Workflow is enhanced through this development, as it eliminates the need to re-key large amounts of property, auto and workers' compensation data. Agents do not need to change their systems to take advantage of this capability, according to The Hartford.

NaviSys (Edison, NJ) has instituted a new pricing structure for its Web-based Front Office for life and annuity order entry. The solution is now available to distributors and carriers under a one-time software license. This pricing option caps the total cost of the system and does not levy per-transaction fees.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC, New York) and AnnuityNet, Inc. (Herndon, VA) have implemented a fully automated, end-to-end processing solution for annuity applications that links Merrill Lynch's (New York) insurance brokers with a wide range of insurance carriers, the firms report. Merrill Lynch will use this new proprietary front end—which it calls Annuity express—to link its 10,000 brokers to 15 major insurance carriers with 199 different products by year-end. Annuity eXpress uses Merrill Lynch's technology platform and AnnuityNet's Web-based desktop technology while leveraging DTCC's Insurance Processing Service (IPS), which provides an automated, centralized system that electronically links insurance carriers with broker/dealers and banks for the exchange of information and money settlement during the sale of variable and fixed rate annuities and life insurance products.

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio