Risk & Insurance articles from January 2007

Risk & Insurance archives from January 2007

One fractured mess.
January 1, 2007... OK, I'll come right out and say it: Claims administration is one big, inchoate mess. No, it's worse. It's dysfunctional. We turned a simple, clerical task into a writhing, global beast. The quest for simplicity and efficiency has instead...

Just play ball.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... Dear Editor, Baseball is competitive, and therefore the liability insurance for players' injuries should be carried by the pension fund of the Players' Association or the agents who handle the financial side of their clients. Each and...

Project ERM.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... Dear Editor, I read your article on Building Information Modeling (Risk & Insurance[R], November 2006, p. 50) and see BIM as beneficial software used to detect design errors before constructing. I thought your article was on target....

Feeling the headache.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... Dear Editor, That was a nice article on the cost of comp (Peter Rousmaniere's column, "Ranking the Cost of Comp," Risk & Insurance[R], November 2006, p. 16). I have been saying the same things for years and beating my head against the...

Upcoming events.(Calendar)
January 1, 2007... JANUARY 9 Joint Industry Forum The Property/Casualty Insurance Joint Industry Forum gathers property/casualty leaders to discuss and exchange ideas of topical importance. This day-long conference will be held at the Waldorf-Astoria in...

Costs of LTD and STD claims begin to bite: pressure mounts on companies to institute return-to-work programs for short- and long-term disability.(UPFRONT: News, Updates and Other Emerging Strategies from Around the World)
January 1, 2007... Long-term disability claims and their first cousins, short-term disability claims, are getting costly--so costly companies now have powerful economic incentive to institute return-to-work programs for disabled workers. It wasn't always so. ...

The offshoring divide: rift has implications for workers' comp insurers who rely on third-party outsourcing.(UPFRONT: News, Updates and Other Emerging Strategies from Around the World)
January 1, 2007... Leaders of major workers' comp third-party administrators are divided over the effectiveness of sending workers' comp claims functions offshore as a way to ease the burden on the shortage of experienced administrators. Richard J. McKenna,...

Hailing from ...(UPFRONT: News, Updates and Other Emerging Strategies from Around the World)
January 1, 2007... After about 13,000 hail storms in the United States in 2005, Boston-based online mapping provider CDS Business Mapping LLC decided to release a list of the 10 most hail-prone cities. More than an umbrella may be needed in these cities. 1....

Gathering clout: program specialists were lost in the expansive sea of insurance until the TMPAA reeled them in.(BROKERS: People, Ideas and Trends shaping the Brokerage Community)
January 1, 2007... Until fairly recently, program administrators might have felt as if they were swimming upstream to get business. Now carriers are paying more attention to this segment of insurance intermediaries--particularly thanks to the help of the Target...

Frank Crystal & Co.(BROKER MOVES)
January 1, 2007... Frank Crystal & Co., a privately owned insurance brokerage firm, has appointed executive vice president SANDY CRYSTAL to lead its national Financial Insurance Services business unit, which provides professional liability, fidelity and...

Graham Co.(BROKER MOVES)
January 1, 2007... The Graham Co., one of the Philadelphia region's largest insurance brokers, has promoted ROBERT J. SCULLIN to sales manager for its Property and Casualty division. He will oversee a 12-person sales team and continue to head the company's...

Derick M. Stitik.(BROKER MOVES)
January 1, 2007... DERICK M. STITIK has joined the firm as a property broker. Previously, he was southeast regional marketing executive for Unisource Administrators.

Stephanie Hays has moved from wholesale and retail brokering to Swett & Crawford's Stephanie Hays Clearwater.(BROKER MOVES)
January 1, 2007... STEPHANIE HAYS has moved from wholesale and retail brokering to Swett & Crawford's Stephanie Hays Clearwater, Fla., office, after more than 10 years as an account executive for Agency Marketing Services.

J.J. Morrow Jr., formerly a managing director of St. Paul Travelers Insurance Co. in Chicago, has joined Swett & Crawford's Chicago office as a property broker.(BROKER MOVES)
January 1, 2007... J.J. MORROW JR., formerly a managing director of St. Paul Travelers Insurance Co. in Chicago, has joined Swett & Crawford's Chicago office as a property broker. Swett & Crawford has also announced that property broker BRIAN JANES is back at its...

Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc.(BROKER MOVES)
January 1, 2007... Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. has named ALAN W. BIELER as treasurer. Bieler succeeds and reports to MATTHEW B. BARTLEY, who was promoted to chief financial officer of MMC in September. Bieler joined MMC in July 2001 as assistant treasurer, after...

Shareholders of Assurex Global, a network of independent insurance brokers representing $23 billion in premium volume, elected new officers at their annual meeting in October.(BROKER MOVES)
January 1, 2007... Shareholders of Assurex Global, a network of independent insurance brokers representing $23 billion in premium volume, elected new officers at their annual meeting in October. WILLIAM D. JEATRAN, CEO of RJF Agencies Inc. of Minneapolis, was...

McQueary Henry Bowles Troy.(BROKER MOVES)
January 1, 2007... McQueary Henry Bowles Troy, a privately owned insurance and risk management firm, has announced the addition of RICK JARRELL to its Dallas office as senior vice president in the property/casualty group. Prior to joining MHBT, Jarrell spent 20...

Door creaks open further.(WORKERS' COMP)
January 1, 2007... Last fall's congressional victories by Democrats open the door further for the feds to regulate workers' compensation. Washington will not seek outright control; it is not even directly interested in workers' comp. But their electoral and...

Dilbertian exclusions.(ROGER ON RISK)
January 1, 2007... Writing insurance humor is a fine art. It's insurance school for four years, and then comedy school for 30 more, before you're any good at it. The underlying problem is that insurance is dull, and humor is funny. So the Insurance Humorists'...

'Plus ca change' all over again?(BROKERAGE)
January 1, 2007... "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose," goes the old French proverb. The more things change, the more they are the same. Will this be true of the recent shift in political power in Washington in the wake of a smashing Democratic victory...

Time to take ourselves seriously.(RISK MANAGEMENT)
January 1, 2007... The December issue of this magazine had two articles discussing the need to attract new talent to the risk management profession. Part of the attraction of any profession is how seriously the profession is taken, which starts with just how...

The player: as head of Harbor Point Re, a member of the Bermuda Class of 2005, John Berger has drawn up a game plan for the reinsurer that's big on teamwork and discipline.(Cover story)
January 1, 2007... Summary * Born in 1950. * Played professional basketball in Europe. * Direct treaty underwriter, Prudential Re. * President and CEO, F&G Re. * President and CEO, Chubb Re. * President and CEO, Harbor Point Re Ltd. ...

The E&S market softens up: the E&S market is softening, but a consensus as to whether it's gone soft is lacking. The biggest profits are expected to come from property-catastrophe areas.(INSURANCE)
January 1, 2007... The overall property/casualty insurance market has been showing signs of softening, but insiders in the excess and surplus lines market are cautiously optimistic about the state of the industry for 2007. In 2005, the surplus lines market...

Closer and apart: new research and feedback from risk managers to identify the 2007 Power Brokers find buyers and brokers divided over compensation methods, yet united over disclosure.(AGENT/BROKER)
January 1, 2007... Risk managers at companies with significant exposures remain as concerned as ever about the cost of insurance. But with the exception of the property catastrophe markets, most rates for commercial insurance held steady or fell during 2006,...

Failing at failures: in the first of a four-part series, two writers explore how insurance insolvency laws and the guaranty-fund system are a patchwork of systemic shortcomings, inefficiency and a lack of political will. What to do?(REGULATION)
January 1, 2007... A property/casualty insurance insolvency is a devastating event for employees, management, insureds, claimants and other stakeholders. Employees are terminated without payment of all accumulated benefits. Insureds and claimants, if they are...

Cascading into Collapse: when lawyers and vendors make decisions about adjusting a claim at the expense of adjusters, it is the beginning of the end of a claims organization.(SPECIAL REPORT: CLAIMS)
January 1, 2007... With lamp and gun, we explore the dark side of workers' compensation claims administration. We will follow, step by painful step, how a good claims operation can tumble into mediocrity. Take note: This happens more frequently than the industry...

Crawling back from the brink: when a claims organization is infused with honesty and clarity, and supervisors have their noses buried in a diary, there's hope for happy endings.(SPECIAL REPORT: CLAIMS)
January 1, 2007... After stalking a workers' comp claims operation as its quality sinks, I switch to describing how executives can dig themselves out of the mess they or their predecessors have created. For good measure, I've sought the advice of...

Claims 2007: incremental progress: the coming year will be marked by "linear improvements" derived from the exploitation of known technologies, according to one analyst.(SPECIAL REPORT: CLAIMS)
January 1, 2007... Perceptions have shifted markedly in the past 12 months concerning the risks and rewards of replacing core claims administration legacy systems, with the major variables in the claims systems replacement equation having changed. The new...

A burden imposed heavyweights: California, Texas and Florida are applying stricter HIPAA standards to workers' comp medical bills. Other states are expected to follow suit, exacting a burden on payers.(TECHNOLOGY)
January 1, 2007... Summary * California, Florida and Texas will adopt HIPAA standards for bill review in workers' compensation by the end of the first quarter 2007, * Other states are expected to follow suit in requiring payers to submit similar data...

Margin calls: the just-in-time manufacturing process has helped manufacturers maintain profit margins, but it has also eroded the safety margin built into supply chains.(INDUSTRY RISK REPORT: MANUFACTURING)
January 1, 2007... Once one of the world's leading cell-phone manufacturers, Ericsson knows only too well how painful a disruption in the supply chain can be. It is a story that has become something of a legend in supply-chain circles. In March 2000, a...

Industry risk report: manufacturing.
January 1, 2007... INDUSTRY RISK REPORT MANUFACTURING In the manufacturing sector, risk management techniques are as varied as the products manufacturing companies make. Some firms choose a financial engineering strategy like entering into interest rate...

Insurance company software.(Directory)
January 1, 2007... Below are paid listings of specialty software packages for the insurance companies, risk managers and brokers. This guide is not intended to be a complete directory but is an overview of some of the packages available. Suppliers themselves have...