Skywire Software (Frisco, Texas), announced the availability of InsBridge 3.8, the latest release of the rating, rules and underwriting system. InsBridge is a Web-based rating, rules and underwriting system that can integrate with any platform and operate on all major operating systems, according to Skywire. Key features of the new release inclue import and export of products, program call outs and program workflow.

Trumbull Services announced source-it vm, the newest in a series of products designed to improve the way subrogation claims are handled. In a BPO environment, source-it vm allows companies to improve productivity and eliminate tasks associated with managing a vendor network for subrogatable losses. An inventory scorecard provides performance measures including: collection, cycle time, settlement, and accurate and timely reports and payments.

Pendo Systems, Inc., New York-based provider of the portfolio accounting solutions BasisPoint, reported that it has signed Chicago-based American Agricultural Insurance Co. as its newest client. According to David Elstrom, VP, accounting systems and internal controls, at American Agricultural, "We selected BasisPoint for our nearly $1 billion of investments because it offers the most comprehensive features in an intuitive, easy-to-use package." The BasisPoint system, which runs on a Microsoft-based platform, provides the flexibility to support complex investments in multiple currencies and tax regimes, Pendo Systems says.

Fiserv has debuted eFreedom Annual Statement, a new system for NAIC filing software that is designed for enterprisewide deployment, and which offers enhanced security features. This new .NET solution represents a complete redesign and reinvention of the NAIC filing process for insurance accountants. According to Fiserv, waiting for crosschecks and internal calculations is eliminated with the system, as they are continuously updated "behind the scenes." According to Deborah Hopkins, VP Compliance Solutions for Fiserv Insurance, “The screen designs are based on Microsoft Excel, which is very intuitive to accountants. We’ve used automation at every turn to eliminate keystrokes, present an array of statements and pages simultaneously, and provide instant access to underlying data elements and formulas."

CSC has announced the release of Precedent ID, a Web-based application that enables adjusters to search an insurer's unique closed claim database for potentially precedential claims to support assessment and negotiation, according to the vendor. The software incorporates new technology to analyze the relationships and constraints surrounding injuries, treatments, prognoses and loss payments. CSC claims that Precedent ID is the only commercially available software that integrates information across claims evaluation, negotiation and resolution.

San Jose, Calif.-based Business Objects announced that it has extended its insurance planning solution to life and health insurance. The build-out of the activity analysis solution will include the ACORD business processes in its insurance activities library. Life insurance-specific reports include balance sheets, income statements and life insurance planning models.

Camilion Solutions introduced Authority Suite, which it describes as a next-generation policy administration system for the property and casualty market. Leveraging a service-oriented architecture and built on a tools-based technology platform, Authority Suite gives insurers the agility they need to overcome the challenges created by hard-coded legacy systems, according to Camilion, including the ability to quickly revise and develop new products, automate underwriting and provide online sales – all while reducing their systems maintenance costs.

Hyland Software released version 6.4 of the OnBase enterprise content management software suite. The latest version provides information workers with new ways to leverage the familiar Microsoft Office System user experience to interact with OnBase transactional content and process management solutions.

MedRisk introduced the EMPower Debit Card, a new service for issuing workers' compensation disability payments. Claims payers send payment files electronically to MedRisk, which then coordinates with the bank to issue debit cards to each new claimant.

DAVID Corporation launched version 4.0 of NavRisk Risk Management Suite. Comprised of NavRisk Policy, NavRisk Central and NavRisk Claims, the solution is designed to automate and streamline labor intensive and error-prone tasks associated with claims and policy processing.

Sapiens International released Sapiens INSIGHT for Reinsurance version 3.5. A web-enabled solution for the insurance market, the new version is designed to support carriers and reinsurers in the management of all types of reinsurance for P&C and Life business and is capable of providing ACORD compliant XML.

By Anthony O'Donnell

There was a curious moment during former Secretary of State Colin Powell's keynote speech Monday at the 2007 IASA Educational Conference & Business Show. Powell rhapsodized about the open and generous character of the American people, and how in the post-9/11 era Americans need to cultivate that character and continue to welcome the outside world with open arms.

Powell built an emotional crescendo, telling touching stories, such as Brazilian students move by the generosity of a restaurant owner buying their meal when they came up short, and a Manhattan hot dog cart operator who refused to let the senior diplomat pay because America had already paid the vendor so much. No doubt many were touched, as I was, by the stories as Powell moved to an applause line saying that America would remain great "as long as we remain an open and welcoming society." And yet, the applause didn't materialize for the moving words of this man who had been welcomed to a standing ovation. Rather, a woman next to me aborted a motion to clap, seeing that others remained still, and for a second or two stray coughs punctuated an awkward quiet.

Probably a critical mass of listeners felt as I did: it's all very well to counsel and open and welcoming spirit and to applaud a degree of generous, hospitable spirit that Americans have traditionally aspired to; but are not some caveats due in an age when terrorists take advantage of openness to study at our aviation schools to learn to fly jets into our buildings, and where freelance jihadis have similarly gamed the open societies of the United States, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom to plot and execute atrocities?

Powell left, as he had arrived, to a heartfelt standing ovation from an audience that no doubt deeply appreciates his long and distinguished career of service to his country, his leadership qualities and unparalleled experience—to say nothing of the unexpected familiarity and humor of his speech. However, I remain convinced that many held their applause because however much they agreed with Powell's optimism, many wished, if only with regard to that one argument, that it had been tempered by caution.

And caution is a good enough theme for a conference dedicated to questions that influence the spending large amounts of treasure on technology solutions—perhaps all the more with the (perhaps irrational) exuberance with which I wrote my last note, on the subject of the ACORD/LOMA conference and the state of insurance technology.

Perhaps trade show fatigue (TSF) is beginning to set in, perhaps the emphasis on sessions more than personal meetings has dampened my enthusiasm slightly, but I find myself dwelling as much this time on the risks as the opportunities. Will the rash of policy administration investments bear the expected fruit? What strategic rethinking inspires the Indian companies to continue to seek American front-men (or women)? Is SOA the new SEMCI (as suggested by Patni front-woman Judy Johnson)? Are insurance company technology organizations truly aligned with the strategic vision of senior business leadership, or is a superficial pretense of same actually undermining the success of long-term architectural planning.

For most of the big questions, there are no obvious and unambiguous answers, which is why we get together and talk about these things at shows like IASA and ACORD/LOMA, and in the pages of Insurance & Technology, to build knowledge and trust and try to mitigate the risks of technology investment. But as long as risk exists—along with death and taxes—and as long as enthusiasm leads to hype and false investment trails, caution will be a cardinal virtue of CIOs and business executives alike.

By Anthony O'Donnell

Ever the controversialist, Judy Johnson, VP and principal solutions architect, Patni, speaking at the Monday, June 4 session "Analysts & Vendors Debate Insurance Technology," at the IASA Educational Conference & Business Show in Minneapolis, Minn., rhetorically asked whether SOA was the new SEMCI, as an example of vast, quixotic spending toward an elusive object.

Johnson was joined on the annual discussion panel, noted for its informed, frank and often humorous treatment of key issues, by Matt Josefowicz, Celent; Chuck Johnston, Oracle; Pat Saporito, Business Objects; and Rick Hoehne, IBM.

Josefowicz, managing director of Celent's global insurance group, began the discussion with his take on what is new in insurance and technology. "There is no 'next big thing," he commented. "It's just about doing things a bit better."

The only truly 'big thing' in recent history for insurance technology has been the emergence of the Internet as a business and consumer tool, which continues to shape the business. However, insurers are working on significant projects in areas such as those that spring from treating data as a strategic asset, Josefowicz said. He also noted the growth of business process management, which he characterized as a kind of souped-up "workflow, coming together with [enterprise application integration]."

Josefowicz cautioned against believing the hype surrounding SOA (services-oriented architecture), but said that, "SOA [enables] more efficient ways to do the same things as EAI." SOA wouldn't suddenly transform the industry, he said, but "there are incremental improvements to be made."

Data, Demographics & Differentiation

IBM's manager, business solution sales, Rick Hoehne, affirmed the role of technology in driving globalization, speed to market and valuable new architectural approaches, but focused on three specific areas where technology was especially relevant: data, demographics and differentiation.

"Differentiation will be key because technology is lowering the barrier of entry to our business," he commented. "You have to be more differentiated in products and how you work in the marketplace." Outside competitors with novel ideas threatened a complacent industry, Hoehne implied: "You should ask yourself, 'What would Richard Branson do if he wanted to attack the insurance business?'"

A self-satisfied insurance industry is also liable to underestimate the impact of demographic changes, particularly the generational differences with regard to use of information technology as a part of daily life. "The Information Age has changed what people expect from every industry," he asserted. "As much as adoption of the Internet has changed things, it's nothing compared with what consumers will expect going forward."

But consumers are not the only participants in the industry who are changing, Hoehne added, but also employees, distributors and other business partners. The businesses that will survive are not necessarily those with prior longevity and economic clout, he argued, noting that, "significant businesses are no longer around; it has nothing to do with size but rather responsiveness and agility."

Data is a key area because we are moving from treating data as a somewhat static asset to a resource, according to Hoehne. "It moves from being something you own to something you consume," he explained. "The future will see us moving not away from structured repositories, but in expanding what we can do with sparse and unclean data from diverse sources…growing at astronomical rates."

Success, Hoehne concluded, depended on the judicious use of that data in combination with a focus on the imperatives of differentiation and demography.

Pat Saporito, Business Objects' director, insurance solutions, continued the focus on data. "The growing amount of data becomes a liability to an extent, so the real trick is to make that data actionable," she said.

In the future state, the boundaries between applications, processes and the analytics they employ will grow increasingly indistinct, Saporito predicted. "Analytics become absolutely embedded in your systems and processes," she commented.

Chuck Johnston, senior director, insurance industry strategy and marketing, Oracle, predicted change in the areas of governance, risk and compliance. At a recent industry meeting Johnston recalled European executives being "horrified" at how little Americans had done with regard to compliance, for example in such areas as risk-based capital. The American attitude is, "We've got things covered; it's a process issue," Johnston said. "But are we really doing enough about governance, risk and compliance?"

Johnston concluded with a more optimistic take than Josefowicz on the degree to which SOA and BPM could reshape business. "Now that you've broken everything down [via a SOA approach] into 500 services, [BPM] allows you to weave it back together in new ways," he said.

Patni's Judy Johnson took issue with Johnson's optimism, saying, "I can believe, given all the hype, that we are, as an industry, once again on the cusp of doing something stupid."

SOA is a boon to CIOs looking for an opening to create something strategically compelling; it will generate abundant work for consultants and it will give service companies the chance to "get inside a company that they will never leave again," Johnson warned. But such eventualities would be a waste of resources because, she added, "the issue is that we have so many things wrong with the systems we already have, mixing them around won't fix them."

SOA, according to Johnson, assumes a 10-year vision to fundamentally change the way an insurer does business. The problem, is "I've never seen an insurance company whose senior leadership has a 10-year vision that they want to share with the technologists," she claimed. "Technology and architecture are not the vehicles of competitive advantage—knowing how to run the business is."

Celent's Josefowicz countered that while, "technology is not the answer, it will be part of the answer." Whereas the senior executives of insurance companies in the 2002/2003 time frame might have said to their CIOs, "Just shut up and spend less money!" they had come to the realization that underinvestment in technology was holding their companies back, Josefowicz asserted.

IBM's Hoehne was more specific in defense of SOA, saying, "I disagree that technology and architecture aren't the vehicles of differentiation. I think SOA is part of the answer."

The problem with much of the SOA hype is that it too often tends to sell SOA as a "thing" that will solve all of insurers otherwise intractable technology problems, Hoehne argued. However, he maintained that SOA is a means to move toward innovative products, sold through innovative channels. "It's not a quick fix," he affirmed, "but if you're going to be innovative, technology will help you to do it."

By Katherine Burger

One of the themes that has emerged from discussions and presentations at this year's IASA Annual Educational Conference & Business Show in Minneapolis is the importance of insurers taking a different, more-savvy approach to information management, in order to leverage the opportunities enabled by the new generation of data management and analytical technologies, as well as to avoid the costs, inefficiencies and operational risk of poorly managed data.

"There's more data awareness in the industry than ever before," commented Peter A. Marotta, AIDM, Enterprise Data Administrator, Enterprise Data Management, ISO (Jersey City, N.J.), who is charged with both documenting ISO's data assets and taking an enterprise view or the organization's data. That's partly because there is more external and internal data than ever before available to insurance professionals, and also because technologies such as data warehouses and analytics tools potentially make that information more accessible, he noted. But more is not necessary better, according to Marotta. The challenge, he said, is "how to make optimal use of the data itself," and to view "data as a corporate asset," similar to financial assets or staff assets.

The problem, especially where less-informed users are concerned, has to do with the quality of data that's coming from a wide range of sources, including census and postal data, Marotta said. "Do you really know what that data is, where that data is, and how it's defined?" he asked. "To make the best use of data you need to know what you have."

The good news is that a growing number of insurance companies "are migrating to some kind of enterprise data strategy," he said. Marotta also is starting to see a few companies appoint someone to a "chief data officer" kind of role. Still, he stresses, this should not be viewed as strictly an IT responsibility. "A data steward has to be on the business side," he said. "A lot of companies cede [this] to the CIO or CTO." But IT can only focus on the tools and systems that help organize and store the data. "Typically it's the business people who head; if you're chief underwriter you oversee risk information; you're the guy who owns the asset."

Improved data quality is one of the potential benefits insurers can gain by adopting a straight-through processing strategy, agreed the panelists for the conference session "STP Does Not Mean Someday's Terrific Promise." Like Marotta, Celent managing director, global insurance group, Matt Josefowicz urged insurers to view "data as a strategic asset. There's an increasing awareness of importance of enterprise data – customer data, risk data and operational data," he said, adding, "The key issues about data are transparency, accessibility and quality." That said, "Data quality is a major issue – making sure data is clean and not corrupted," Josefowicz noted. "STP is key to supporting data quality."

He outlined several improvements that can be gained when data can flow through the enterprise electronically are automated decisioning and workflow; as well as integrated production systems, external data sources (e.g., automating requirements gathering) and internal data (e.g., claims and policy data).

STP actually helps an organization "leverage institutionalized business knowledge," noted Bill Dochterman, VP, product management, Insurity. "It automates the flow of business and exception processing [by] applying the right resource to the right transaction at the right time."
At Swiss Re, an organization that has been traveling the path to STP through initiatives such as development of a single electronic workflow for data and a each business has single integrated systems path for each line of business, the benefits have included reduced expenses, improved compliance and transparency, and more organizational flexibility, reported Mike Rubin, SVP, technology.

Looking ahead, Rubin said, Swiss Re is looking at opportunities to expand the current platform "to include more of a value chain, and add external data to internal data," as well as consolidating processes in a services-oriented architecture (SOA) environment, and "aggregating all data for better management and analytics."