Who's Buying What: Recent deals for technology software and services
Insurance Networking News, October 2007
COLONIAL SELECTS IWORKS
Colonial Life & Accident Insurance Co., Columbia, S.C., selected iWORKS NAVIGATOR, a life insurance and annuity illustration system from SunGard Data Systems Inc., Wayne, Pa. SunGard's iWORKS NAVIGATOR Illustrations is an integrated, Web-based or desktop solution designed to enhance the sales process and incorporates functionality for life insurance and annuity illustrations and quotes.
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GUY CARPENTER ADDS LOCATION INTELLIGENCE
Pitney Bowes MapInfo, Troy, N.Y., a global provider of location intelligence, integrated its location intelligence technology into i-aXs, an online risk management platform developed by New York-based Guy Carpenter & Co. LLC, a risk and reinsurance specialist. With the added component of location intelligence, i-aXs is designed to enable insurers to analyze and visualize their portfolio exposures and losses at a granular level, helping them make more informed reinsurance purchase decisions.
Guy Carpenter already leveraged McLean, Va.-based MicroStrategy Inc.'s business intelligence technology within its i-aXs platform and sought a way to more efficiently analyze and report data from a location perspective. It integrated the Pitney Bowes MapInfo location intelligence component with its MicroStrategy business intelligence platform and, as a result, ceding insurance companies can use location intelligence while concurrently accessing a range of enterprise reporting and analytic solutions.
PITNEY BOWES MAPINFO ALSO ENABLES
i-aXs to utilize the output of standard catastrophe model applications, says the company. Users are able to seamlessly generate maps of a catastrophe exposure based on reports as well as create reports based on maps.
EBIX SIGNS THREE CONTRACTS
Atlanta-based Ebix Inc., an international developer and supplier of software and e-commerce solutions to the insurance industry, has signed contracts with three insurers to license and deploy back-end insurance company systems.
Ebix's Infinity carrier system division signed contracts with Princeton, N.J.-based Princeton Insurance Co., Houston-based HCC Insurance Holdings Inc. and Uniondale, N.Y.-based Wright Risk Management, to license and implement its Infinity brand of carrier systems to these companies.
The three contracts have a cumulative value ranging between $12 million to $18 million, based on the amount of professional services work that is billed to the three insurance companies.
MICHIGAN BASIC PICKS INSURITY SOFTWARE
Michigan Basic Property Insurance Association, Detroit, selected Alpharetta, Ga.-based ChoicePoint Asset Co.'s Insurity to provide policy administration, claims and reporting services. Michigan Basic will implement Insurity's Policy Decisions, Claims Decisions and Reporting Decisions software to manage its homeowners, residential fire, crime and commercial property business.
According to Kay Robinson, manager of information systems and support for Michigan Basic, a new service vendor needed to meet several key criteria: their technology had to run on the Microsoft .NET platform, use XML and be fully Web-enabled.
Michigan Basic was impressed with Claims Decisions' workflow and messaging, Robinson says. "It's a tight, all-inclusive package that will give us straight-through processing and consistent handling from start to finish. Policy Decisions was equally impressive, boosting our efficiency from agency submission to built-in underwriting rules."
ASPEN RE GOES LIVE WITH CUSTOMIZED RMS PLATFORM
Bermuda-based Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd. launched a custom-developed risk management platform to identify the concentration of exposures across its reinsurance and insurance portfolios. RiskClash was developed for Aspen by Risk Management Solutions Inc., a Newark, Calif.-based provider of products and services for the quantification and management of catastrophe risks. The solution is designed to model single-site risk accumulation across combined insurance and reinsurance lines down to a city block, subject to data being available.
The advantage of the RiskClash system, the company says, is its ability to determine Aspen's aggregated exposure across its entire risk portfolio, and identify post loss potential exposure in key geographical locations with a high level of accuracy. In addition, the system will allow Aspen to run "what if" scenarios using any country and peril.
NATIONAL INDEMNITY SELECTS FISERV SOLUTION
Fiserv Insurance Solutions Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, announced that Omaha, Neb.-based National Indemnity Co., the largest member of the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. group of insurance companies, has licensed the Web-based Fiserv Advanced Billing solution for property/casualty insurers. Written in Java, Fiserv Advanced Billing is designed to increase operational flexibility while driving down cost of operations.
Fiserv Advanced Billing supports personal and commercial lines in any combination and electronic viewing and payment capabilities for policyholders. Based on open service-oriented architecture principles, the Web-based system is platform-flexible, and provides online, real-time processing for carriers of all sizes.
"With the Fiserv solution, National Indemnity will achieve its goals for supporting direct billing with greater efficiency, and enhancing the customer experience with the convenience of electronic billing and payment," says Gary Sherne, president of P&C systems solutions for Fiserv Insurance. "Electronic billing and payment will reduce the expense of traditional printing and mailing, and give customers fast, reliable, secure access to premium invoices."
UNIFI COS. CHOOSES POINT-OF-SALE SOLUTION
Insurance Technologies LLC, Colorado Springs, Colo., a provider of illustration and point-of-sale software, announced that Lincoln, Neb.-based UNIFI Cos., an annuity provider, has selected ForeSight to enhance functionality and overall user experience of their annuity sales and marketing technology.
ForeSight manages all point-of-sale activities from a single platform, and is being utilized by UNIFI to integrate asset allocation models, provide product-training wizards, offer sales strategies and concepts, generate storyboards, provide opportunities to integrate electronic applications and clearly present differentiating product features and benefits.
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