Insurance Networking News: Executive Strategies for Technology Management articles from June 2006

Insurance Networking News: Executive Strategies for Technology Management archives from June 2006

Insurers Bring Billing Out to the Front.
June 1, 2006... Remember the old days of paying an electric bill or making a car payment-writing out a check, putting the bill and check into the provided envelope, slapping a first-class stamp on it and tossing it in the mailbox? Thanks to technology, much...

The Power of Expectations.(Company overview)
June 1, 2006... From call centers to data centers, the insurance industry continues to turn to outsourcing in an effort to manage costs and secure access to resources. Information technology assets have become vital to ongoing operations and new growth, making...

New Products, Special Delivery.
June 1, 2006... Competition, regulatory compliance and cost cutting still drive life insurance product lifecycle management (PLM). To remain competitive in an economy with a demographic of escalating baby boomer prospects, developing and maintaining a...

The Data Steward Revisited.
June 1, 2006... We've seen a lot of wacky technology job titles come and go over the years, especially among those "bleeding-edge" financial and technology companies that found themselves in fast company circles. What ever happened to the "minister of...

News Briefs.(CIGNA Corp. chooses MBI Benefits Inc.)(nominees for insurance web sites)(insurance customers )
June 1, 2006... MBI TO PROVIDE CIGNA'S FSA CARD Waltham, Mass.-based MBI Benefits Inc. will provide the national debit card for Philadelphia-based CIGNA HealthCare's flexible spending accounts (FSAs). The MBI Benefits Card is designed to provide CIGNA's...

Solutions.
June 1, 2006... NEW CSF DESIGNER FEATURES Metavante Corp., Milwaukee, has added a number of features to its CSF Designer document composition application: * New tools designed to reveal a document template's underlying structure and formatting rules....

Survey: CFOs Cut Off from CEOs' Growth Goals: Are regulatory reporting and the inability to make sense of massive amounts of disparate data hindering insurance CFOs from supporting their CEO's growth strategies?
June 1, 2006... Insurance CFOs seem to be get-ting a bad rap. According to a recent study, insurance finance executives are so busy dealing with compliance obligations and administrative duties, they are finding it difficult to support their CEOs' growth...

News Briefs.(Safeco Corp. appoints William Jenks)(Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. appoints Mark Esposito)(The Progressive Group opens catastrophe response center )
June 1, 2006... SAFECO NAMES WILLIAM JENKS AS CIO Seattle-based Safeco Corp. has named William Jenks chief information officer. Jenks most recently served as executive vice president and chief information officer of worldwide operations at Publicis...

Outsourcing Best Practices.
June 1, 2006... * Get organizational buy-in to the outsourcing relationship. "Aside from cultural and skill differences, aspects such as internal communication structures, internal resistance and cultural sensitization may need to be adequately addressed"...

N.C. Blues Eliminates Duplicates: Automating its claims processing saved Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina approximately $250,000, with a potential to save up to $1 million.
June 1, 2006... For many insurance companies, the challenges involved in processing claims are ongoing. Because claims often involve multiple decisions, data from various sources, and task handoffs, it's clear why carriers see the potential for improved...

Regulators Put Climate Change on the Docket: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners established a task force to investigate how changing climate patterns may affect the industry.(Interview)
June 1, 2006... The NAIC formation of a task force to examine climate change comes on the heels of devastating back-to-back hurricane seasons that caused a record $30 billion in U.S. insured losses in 2004 and as much as $60 billion in insured losses from...

Financial Services Most Exposed to Cyber Risks.
June 1, 2006... Last year was a turning point for cyber attacks. It was the year when the predominant threats on the Internet transitioned from being perpetrated by hobbyist hackers to criminals. This is according to a recent report issued by Counterpane...

Insight Wins The Game: A hosted performance management system is helping senior insurance executives in smaller companies use "scorecards" to monitor their business.
June 1, 2006... For some time now, insurance companies have made technology investments a priority. The result? Instead of disparate, paper-based information residing in hard-to-access metal file cabinets, all kinds of e-data languish in disconnected computer...

Survey Reveals Most Insurers Don't Know the Score.(Survey)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Many insurance companies feel the pain associated with not having access to useful performance measurements. As a matter of fact, through a survey of its clients, Opus Solutions, Hinsdale, Ill., discovered the following information: * Only...

Alliances.(Adobe Systems Inc. partners with Itemfield)(Micro Focus Group PLC partners with Oracle Corp.)(Cognos Inc. partners with Lombardi Software Inc.)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... ADOBE, ITEMFIELD JOIN FORCES ON E-FORMS DEAL Itemfield, a San Mateo, Calif., provider of data transformation software, will work with San Jose-based Adobe Systems Inc., to develop a solution designed for the insurance industry. The...

The Roots of Product Configuration Lie in Manufacturing.
June 1, 2006... If we agree on the definition-product configurators are rules-based or knowledge-based tools that generate a list of components or assemblies, a product structure and associated documentation-it's easy to understand why long before the...

Different Products, Same Lifecycle ManageMent.
June 1, 2006... Unlike the physical components of a typical manufactured product, insurance products are considered less tangible, and are most often considered "intellectual property." However, product life cycle management functions the same in both a...

Solutions.(FileNet Corp.'s records manager suite)(3i Infotech Ltd., ISO Properties Inc.)(Pegasystems Inc. upgrades its smartBPM Suite)
June 1, 2006... MANAGEMENT AT THE FILE SYSTEM LEVEL Costa Mesa, Calif.-based FileNet Corp. USA's Records Manager Suite now includes an intelligent, rules-based capture and management solution for unmanaged records at the file system level. FileNet Records...

Who's Buying What: Recent deals for technology software and services.(Universal Insurance of North America signs CGI Group Inc .)(Kyobo Life Insurance Company Ltd. signs International Business Machines Corp.)(Hastings Mutual Insurance plans )
June 1, 2006... UNIVERSAL SIGNS SEVEN-YEAR BPO AGREEMENT Universal Insurance of North America, Sarasota, Fla., has signed a seven-year agreement with CGI Group Inc. valued at between $45 and $75 million for policy and accounting business process services...

Ad Index for June 2006.
June 1, 2006... Advertiser Website Address Page # BillMatrix www.billmatrix.com 30 EDS Web Seminar www.sourcemedia.com/webseminar/EDS/Jun8/regform 27 Exstream Software www.exstream.com/INN 25 Fiserv Insurance...

Whose Rules Do You Use?: Should you expect your application vendor to build proprietary rules technologies into your application, or should you expect the company to use enterprise rules solutions?
June 1, 2006... Business rules have become a hot topic. At an industry event such as ACORD/LOMA, you'll hear many vendors talk about having business rules. We've all been here before; the buzz makes it hard for many of us to consider what we really need in...