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

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

Agent Attrition & Its Consequences.(insurance industry)
November 1, 2006... Fed up with the life of an insurance agent, many aging baby boomers are retiring or choosing something spicier for their lives. Some principals are seizing the opportunity to sell their agencies to banks or another entities. While they may make...

Unfamiliar Exposure: Nanotechnology deals in tiny particles, but its potential risk to insurers is sizeable and nearly impossible to calculate.
November 1, 2006... Emerging nanotechnologies have the potential to influence and change our lives in ways we could not have imagined as recently as a decade ago. A generic term for applications at the molecular level, nanotechnology will eventually influence...

Rating Agencies Assess Carriers' Use of ERM.
November 1, 2006... Insurance has always been about risk, and insurance companies, armed with actuarial tables and reinsurance, have generally handled it well. But there are risks that go beyond the ordinary-storms that wipe out a city's worth of houses and...

The Great Enabler.(significance of information technology to improve service of insurance industry, insurance agent attrition concerns)
November 1, 2006... Why is using technology to improve service to the agent distribution network so important? Our readers tell us that one of their chief concerns is agency attrition. One source quoted in this month's cover story talks about an 80% agent...

Pulling the Strings That Control Data: Managing the inherent complexities of agent appointments and their regulatory reporting requirements means thinking of data as a strategic asset.(Great American Insurance Co.)
November 1, 2006... When it employees at Cincinnati-based Great American Insurance Co. got wind late last year that their new CIO would be Piyush Sing, former CIO of the Peoria, Ill., multi-line P&C carrier RLI Systems, they probably took a deep breath-rightly...

News Briefs.(Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. partners with trade association in Washington)
November 1, 2006... HARTFORD TEAMS WITH TECH GROUP The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., Hartford, Conn., is working with the largest technology trade association in Washington State to offer policies designed for the technology industry. The insurer...

Solutions.(Whitehill Technologies Inc., AMS Services Inc. and McCamish Systems launches new software solutions)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... WHITEHILL SOFTWARE HELPS CREATE POLICIES Whitehill Technologies, Moncton, New Brunswick, has shipped a new release of the InSystems product line, which helps create insurance policies. IStream Publisher 3.2 simplifies production of...

News Briefs.(governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) software market share, campaign to help uninsured, return on investment trends of the European investors)
November 1, 2006... GRC MARKET GROWING Citing an increased focus on corporate governance and enterprise risk management, Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass., has combined governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) software into one area of study. The GRC...

What Is Nanotechnology?
November 1, 2006... "Nano" means, one billionth, 1/1,000,000,000. One nanometer, abbreviated as, 1 nm, is one billionth of a meter. (A meter is about one yard.) This is a very, very small number. A nanometer is a million times smaller than a millimeter and 10,000...

Solutions.
November 1, 2006... GRID COMPUTING FOR LIFE A new grid computing offering to help life insurance clients decrease the time needed to run complex insurance model scenarios is now available from IBM Corp., which is headquartered in Armonk, N.Y. The IBM Grid and...

Pooling Insurance Policies.
November 1, 2006... With the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, banks went on a tear, spending billions of dollars buying, building or starting up property and casualty insurance agencies. But that trend has slowed, partly because the best-of-breed...

Agent Compensation Systems.
November 1, 2006... One way insurance firms can better manage their agents is by adopting new strategies and systems, not by pumping up compensation. "Most agents are overpaid," says Mark Stiffler, president and CEO of Synygy Inc., a Chester, Pa.-based firm that...

Audios and Visuals Working Together: Combining sights and sounds helps an Indiana insurance brokerage firm communicate on the Web and provides message delivery confirmation.
November 1, 2006... The world record for the largest game of Chinese Whispers, also known as the telephone game or Pass It Down, was set by entertainer Mac King, Jan. 6, 2004, and involved 614 people. While it's safe to say King didn't pass on a message about...

Data Strategies that Work: The right data integration plan can improve underwriting, risk selection, claims management and loss-mitigation, while revealing business patterns and supporting decision-making.
November 1, 2006... Insurance Networking News asked David Pedersen, senior vice president at Insurity, Hartford, Conn., to explain how a data integration project can evolve from an enterprisewide objective to a successful way of life. INN: Do most insurance...

What Agents Really Want.(information management by insurance agents)(Report)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Carriers may know that technology is a critical enabler in meeting agents' needs, but do they know exactly what agents need when it comes to that technology? What tools do agents have access to, and how often do they use them? How do agents...

IT's Role in ERM.(information technology in enterprise risk management)
November 1, 2006... ERM is only partly a technology issue, and responsibility for managing enterprise risk is more likely to fall to a risk manager or chief risk officer than to a CIO. In fact, IT can sometimes be considered a risk itself-large implementations...

Solutions.
November 1, 2006... MODEM ROUTERS ENABLE WIRELESS OPTIMIZATION Three new ADSL2+ Barricade Modem Routers from SMC Networks Inc., Irvine, Calif., are designed to deliver support for the new ADSL2+ technology, and incorporate leading-edge performance and quality...

Electronic Solution to the Paper Chase: As customer files swelled in size and number, a California insurer found an electronic solution that did more than just eliminate paper.(information management by Liability Insurance Administrators)
November 1, 2006... Liability Insurance Administrators (LIA), Santa Barbara, Calif., was drowning in paper and all the costs associated with generating it, filing it and keeping it around. With an average of 15,000 to 20,000 active existing insurance policy...

News Briefs.(ChoicePoint acquired Steel Card LLC, Fiserv Inc. acquired InsureWorx, insurance industry study findings)
November 1, 2006... FISERV ACQUIRES INSUREWORX Fiserv Inc., based in Brookfield, Wis., acquired InsureWorx, a provider of core processing software solutions for workers' compensation, commercial P&C and risk administration organizations. InsureWorx,...

Solutions.(Whitehill Technologies Inc., Arbitration Forums Inc. and Allegient Systems launches new softwares)
November 1, 2006... MONITORING AND MANAGING CLAIMS Version 5.4 of Expense and Performance Management Suite is the second new version released by Wilton, Conn.-based Allegient Systems in 2006. The system includes the addition of Self-Insured Retention (SIR)...

Who's Buying What: Recent deals for technology software and services.(Custard Insurance Adjusters contracted with Marshall and Swift/Boeckh, Peachtree Special Risk Brokers LLC acquired Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server, Hartford Fire Insurance Co. partnered with Insurance Technologies LLC)
November 1, 2006... CAT CLAIMS Custard Insurance Adjusters, a Norcross, Ga., independent loss adjusting company, contracted with Marshall and Swift/Boeckh (MSB), New Berlin, Wis., for MSB's IntegriClaim tool for field estimating and for its IntegriClaim...

Ad Index for November 2006.(Directory)
November 1, 2006... Advertiser Website Address Page # Bill Matrix www.billmatrix.com 21 Duck Creek Technology www.duckcreektech.com 7 EDS SOLCORP www.solcorp.com CV2 Group 1 Software www.g1.com/Ad/PremTax/ 29 ISO www.iso.com 23...

Avalanche of Information Calls for New Strategies: Insurers are learning new ways to store burgeoning electronic documents and comply with related regulations.
November 1, 2006... The rapid proliferation of enterprise content, such as electronic documents, audiovisual files, instant messaging (IM), recorded phone conversations and e-mail, is having significant impact on the global insurance industry. Insurers now...