Who's Buying What: Recent deals for technology software and services
Insurance Networking News, September 1, 2008
FARMERS SELECTS 360VALUE TO ESTIMATE HOME COSTS
The Farmers Insurance Group of Cos., Los Angeles, selected 360Value to estimate reconstruction costs for its high-value home program. Developed by a team from ISO subsidiaries Xactware Solutions Inc., Orem, Utah, and Boston-based AIR Worldwide Corp., 360Value is a Web-based reconstruction-cost estimator designed to provide easy-to-calculate reconstruction-cost estimates for residential, commercial and agricultural properties.
Advertisement
As a component-based reconstruction-cost estimator, 360Value accounts for material and labor costs associated with rebuilding high-value properties. The individual unit costs are highly localized and extensively researched by a dedicated team of construction experts. 360Value also gives Farmers the ability to estimate current construction pricing when offering to renew existing policies.
"360Value brings strong property-valuation capabilities to our high-value home program," says Todd Brooks, VP of underwriting for Farmers. "We're pleased by the extensive level of detail we're able to enter about individual properties, which is important when estimating the reconstruction costs of high-value homes."
360Value provides synergies that complement Farmers' underwriting workflow, according to Jersey City, N.J.-based ISO. Currently, Farmers uses ISO's LOCATION (PPC and Wildfire Services) and A-PLUS in connection with the underwriting of its property business. This data can be accessed through the 360Value user interface or integrated directly into Farmers' policy management systems.
MARYSVILLE MUTUAL SIGNS CONTRACTS WITH CONNECTIVE
Connective Technologies Inc., Houston, announces the signing of contracts with Marysville, Kan.-based Marysville Mutual Insurance Co. for licensing and implementing TEAM-UP Download and TEAM-UP Translation Solutions. The TEAM-UP suite of products provides once-and-done processing in an industry compliant, data-secure environment for agency downloads.
"After completing a market survey with our agencies and identifying agency Download as a top requirement, we decided to invest in this automation," says Trent Moser, president of Marysville Mutual. "We had been evaluating the TEAM-UP product suite for more than a year and determined that its SOA technology framework, feature/function robustness, and ease of use would provide a value-added, premier service for our agencies and policyholders. All of which allow us to achieve our goal of making it easier to do business with Marysville."
TEAM-UP Download is designed to be an Internet-secure offering leveraged by more than 50 P&C carriers in providing accessibility to more than 20,000 communicating agency pairs using more than 40 different agency management systems throughout the United States.
CAPITA LIFE AND MAJESCOMASTEK EXPAND LICENSE
MajescoMastek's parent company, Mumbai-based Mastek, expanded its license and service arrangement with London-based Capita Life & Pensions for its Elixir software to support the customer base of Capita's business process outsourcing (BPO) operations in the UK life and pensions market.
This expanded agreement, signed on May 29, includes an enhanced support and maintenance arrangement based on Elixir as the strategic platform of choice for the new product launches and legacy migrations/consolidations.
"Having Elixir as part of our overall life and pensions BPO solution proposition gives Capita a real competitive advantage," says Steve Parkinson, managing director Capita Life & Pensions. "Capita already administers a significant number of policies on Elixir on behalf of our customers, and with this new capability and expanded service arrangement, we are confident we can expand this to cover the majority of the 22 million policies we currently administer."
BCNEPA SELECTS AUDIO SEARCH SOLUTION
Nexidia Inc., an Atlanta-based provider of audio search and speech analytics solutions, announced that Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-based health insurer Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania (BCNEPA) selected Nexidia's speech analytics solution to improve service quality and member satisfaction.
With Nexidia's Enterprise Speech Intelligence (ESI) solution, BCNEPA was able to quickly analyze their call center audio data and pinpoint the root causes behind a spike in call volume within the first 30 days of solution deployment, according to Nexidia.
To understand the increase in call volume in late 2007, BCNEPA turned to speech analytics to find answers to help maintain their superior member satisfaction and service levels. BCNEPA turned to Nexidia's QuickStart Solutions for contact centers to categorize customer conversations by call type and analyze call patterns.
With Nexidia's hosted OnDemand deployment option-minimizing deployment time as well as additional hardware or software investments, BCNEPA determined the specific system, process and policy changes in their claims processing operations that contributed to the persistent spike in call volume.
"In our industry, we face the constant pressure of providing fast, responsive and accurate service, while also keeping on top of compliance and confidentiality issues, so we turned to speech analytics to gain a much higher degree of visibility and understanding over our call volume patterns and trends on an ongoing basis," says Bob McDonald, director of customer service of BCNEPA.
For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:
