The Best-of-Class Strategy Makes a Return in the Cloud Era [ Source: UNIT4 CODA, Inc. ]

November 2012- This report takes a look at UNIT4 and how the company's financial solution Coda Financials enables the financial executive to have a no-compromise approach to financial modeling and applications choice i.e. adding, keeping or changing business applications without losing control or increasing the risk of non-compliancy.

Risky Business for Insurers Managing Portfolio Risk for an Enterprise Risk Management Strategy [ Source: Clearwater Analytics ]

September 2011- Investment professionals tasked with managing an increasingly important investment portfolio must protect the company from financial risk, a key component of an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) strategy. Doing so has become more difficult, especially during periods of market instability. Chief Investment Officers (CIOs) need to know risk exposure immediately, not only at month- or quarter-end.

Join Jim Krygier, Chief Investment Officer at The Warranty Group, Deb Smallwood, Founder of Strategy Meets Action, and ...

Risky Business: How The Warranty Group Manages Risk to Maximize Return on their Investment Portfolio [ Source: Clearwater Analytics ]

September 2011- The Warranty Group sought out a single, automated and integrated platform that provided specific, comprehensive coverage of global assets across numerous portfolios at individual portfolio, composite and aggregate levels. It also needed to provide finance and accounting teams, treasurers, the chief investment officer, the CFO, and the Board of Directors with the ability to drill-down to individual securities. Such a system would allow The Warranty Group to segment different geographical regions into individual portfolio accounts, ...

Implementing a Superior Strategy for Insurance Investment Reporting [ Source: Clearwater Analytics ]

September 2011- Insurers using an Integrated by Design investment portfolio reporting system delivered as an outsourced Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution realize advantages unmatched by disparate, on-premise systems reliant on middleware and manual processes. This demand for timely, accurate, actionable portfolio information delivered in an easy-to-consume manner has exposed the shortcomings of installed, legacy systems and the manual processes that accompany them. Turmoil in the financial markets in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis has intensified the need ...

Insurance: Converging Customers, Cost Management and Compliance [ Source: Kofax ]

February 2011- As challenges always provide chances, the future looks good for the insurance industry as a whole. Companies that understand the new market dynamics and take a holistic approach to cost management, operational efficiency, customer value and risk management will come out as clear winners, driving income, profit and business growth. Globalization and today’s technologies are working in favor of those organizations.

Building an Adaptive Enterprise Document Automation Strategy [ Source: Oracle ]

September 2010- Analysts estimate that the average insurer has between five and eight document automation solutions, sometimes running multiple systems within each business unit, that create communications and efficiency challenges. Learn the steps to achieving a single, adaptive document automation platform that efficiently executes on today’s customer and channel communications strategies, with the flexibility to expand and change with future communication and regulatory needs.

Integrated-By-Design: Updating Systems for Monitoring, Managing & Reporting on Financial Assets [ Source: Clearwater Analytics ]

June 2010- Systems for monitoring, managing, and reporting on financial assets are mission-critical, particularly in such a volatile investment environment. Yet, far too many insurers today rely on legacy systems that are outdated, expensive to maintain, offer limited portfolio visibility, do not effectively assess risk exposure in a timely fashion, and are heavily reliant on time-consuming, error-prone manual reconciliation.

NAIC SSAP No. 43R: A Practical Analysis -- Interpreting the Latest Guidance for Insurance Companies Accounting for "Loan-backed and Structured Securities" [ Source: Clearwater Analytics ]

December 2009- On Sept. 23, 2009, The National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) Statutory Accounting Principles Working Group adopted SSAP No. 43R, providing insurance companies with guidance on recording other-than-temporary impairments (OTTI) on loan-backed and structured securities. For insurance companies, SSAP No. 43R applies to all investments held by the reporting entity subsequent to Sept. 30, 2009. This article provides a framework for insurers to understand the implications of SSAP No. 43R, and includes recommendations for responding to SSAP No. 43R ...

Automated Controls for SAP [ Source: Infogix ]

July 2009- As more and more companies migrate portions of their information technology portfolio into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software application suites such as SAP, the question of how best to implement automated controls over the information and processes embodied by the ERP module(s) requires careful consideration. This paper explores several critical factors that must be evaluated in order to construct a control framework that will satisfy current and future company, audit, governance, compliance, and regulatory ...

Meeting the Insurance Enterprise Compliance Challenge [ Source: IBM ]

August 2008- In a highly regulated industry that has had to respond to increasingly stringent regulatory demands in recent years, it may seem that compliance could not get any more challenging for insurance companies. However, a worsening national economic situation, powered by a public perception of poorly managed corporate risk, has brought even greater urgency to the need for corporate transparency. Ultimately, insurers that meet the challenge of enterprise compliance take a proactive versus a reactive approach, ...

Meeting the Solvency II Operational Risk Challenge [ Source: i-flex Solutions ]

April 2008- Solvency II is the next big thing in the insurance industry. The European Commission’s Solvency II (SII) project will replace its current Solvency I rules for insurers. The new regime’s three-pillared approach aims to align capital adequacy requirements with the true risks of insurance companies. It promotes a risk-based economic framework, which induces insurers to measure and monitor their risks and have risk-based capital requirements. While much of SII’s focus has been ...

Blue Frog's Affirm for Annuities [ Source: Blue Frog Solutions ]

October 2007- Affirm™ for Annuities is a "Compliance & Order Management" system designed to integrate a carrier's complex product rules with a distributor's compliance processing to generate transactions that are "in good order". Compliant applications are then electronically submitted to carriers for processing after successfully passing all supervisory reviews required by the distributor.

Achieving Customer Service Excellence Through Billing [ Source: Guidewire Software ]

September 2007- Three Ways Your Billing Department Can Positively Impact Customer Experience.