DELIVERY STRATEGIES BRIEFS

American National Insurance Co. (Galveston, TX) has selected Group 1 Software's (Lanham, MD) data quality solutions to enhance the accuracy of its policyholder address information, track address changes and merge duplicate records. "Under the non-public personal information provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, we are required to communicate in writing with our policyholders on a regular basis," says Albert Amato, senior vice president of life insurance operations at American National. "The passage of this act placed increased importance on the integrity of our policyowner data. We selected Group 1's data quality solutions to improve the accuracy of our customer data based on a strong endorsement from one of our subsidiaries currently using Group 1's solutions."

Zurich North America Small Business (Schaumburg, IL) has added online functionality for agents and brokers accessing customer information online. By logging onto eZSB, the Zurich Small Business Web site, agents can access, view and print their customers' loss-run reports, policy documents and forms from their desktops. Agents can now access customers' policy documents on eZSB through the Zurich site's Document Warehouse, an online repository for storing and retrieving policy documents and forms, including insured copies of policy declaration pages for new business, endorsements and renewals; policy forms by policy; underwriting-initiated cancellation, non-renewal and restatement notices; and billing-initiated direct notices of cancellation and reinstatement notices. The new online claim detail report has been redesigned to make it easier to understand a customer's claim activity, providing a history of losses incurred over the life of a policy, reported by policy year.

Belleview, WA-based Unigard Insurance Group implemented IVANS Transformation Station in response to agents' advocacy of SEMCI (single entry multiple carrier interface). The decision came after a strategic session with the agency leadership of the Applied Systems (University Park, IL) Client network (ASCnet). The group recently conducted a series of carrier meetings on Transformation Station in the Seattle area.

Brookfield, WI-based Fiserv, Inc., completed its previously announced agreement to acquire AVIDYN, Inc., a provider of products for niche healthcare segments, through its two wholly owned subsidiaries: ppoONE, Inc., offering claims repricing and data management services, and ValueCHECK, Inc., a provider of utilization review and case management services.

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