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BlueCross BlueShield, VC Firm Fund MDM Company
November 24, 2008Chicago - BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, L.P., a corporate venture fund that is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, and Sandbox Industries announced a $5-million investment in Initiate Systems, Inc., a provider of master data management (MDM) solutions for health information exchange.
BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners is a newly formed, $116-million corporate venture fund to which 11 independent Blue Cross and/or Blue Shield companies have already committed capital. The fund invests in technologies, products, and services in the healthcare industry that promote efficiency, lower costs, and improve options for consumers. In a unique partnership, the fund is managed jointly by representatives from the Association, the participating Blue Plans, and Sandbox Industries, a Chicago-based venture capital firm.
Paul Brown, Managing Director of BlueCross BlueShield Ventures, Inc., said: “We are pleased to launch this fund, which enables BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners to be at the forefront of technological innovation in healthcare. We selected Initiate Systems as our inaugural investment because Initiate has proven through over 100 healthcare implementations that its software enables hospitals and independent delivery networks to deliver safe, responsive patient care while increasing productivity and cost effectiveness.”
The first investment the fund has made is in Initiate Systems, a company that offers technology to enable organizations to leverage and share critical data assets. Initiate software is designed to enable strategic initiatives such as electronic health records (EHR) and clinical portals that help improve efficiencies, increase patient and provider satisfaction, reduce errors that result from poor data quality, and create an interoperable environment that allows healthcare organizations to better serve their communities. It can also help healthcare organizations, including payers and providers, save millions of dollars in administrative costs.
“Initiate Systems is honored to be the first investment made by BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners,” said Bill Conroy, President and CEO of Initiate Systems. “The Blue Cross and Blue Shield brand is among the most respected and recognized in the healthcare industry, which is why we feel this investment demonstrates confidence in our company as a market leader and our software as a proven, enabling technology for health information exchange.”
Source: Initiate Systems Inc.
FINEOS Announces Global Claims Summit
November 12, 2008Dublin, Ireland – FINEOS Corp. a provider of enterprise software solutions for insurance, bancassurance and government, recently concluded its annual FINEOS Claims Global Summit in Boston. This year’s event, sponsored by FINEOS, IBM and other FINEOS partners, was attended by representatives from over 20 organizations from the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Africa. The Summit is a unique, interactive event for FINEOS clients and partners to come together to share claims best practice and hear how their peers are driving improvements with innovative approaches to claims management.
FINEOS CEO, Michael Kelly said, "This has been a tremendous success for FINEOS. More than ever, insurers will be looking at ways to cut costs by increasing automation and straight-through processing, while also focusing on enterprise flexibility and agility. We know that in this challenging economic environment, insurers can expect to see an increase in claims. This is why strong claims management is so crucial. It was great to see our clients and partners sharing knowledge with one another and learning from real-world experiences. We look forward to continuing to offer this industry-leading event in the years ahead".
The Summit kicked off with an address from Michael Kelly, highlighting recent FINEOS successes in North America, Europe, Australasia and Africa. Since last year’s Summit in Chicago, FINEOS has:
- Celebrated 15 years in business
- Continued to increase year on year revenues and profits
- Grown employee headcount by almost 20%
- Won ICT Company of the Year
- Invested significantly in R&D
- Signed recent deals with four top tier insurance clients
- Gone live at over 12 client sites during the past eight months
- Released FINEOS Claims Version 6, which has had positive customer and market feedback
- Made significant appointments to strengthen the FINEOS board and the FINEOS team in North America
Andrew Saunders, CEO of ITSS, the IT shared services centre for the Transport Accident Corp. (TAC) and Victoria Workcover Authority (VWA) in Melbourne, a combined claims organization of 3,000 people serving the state of Victoria in Australia, gave a presentation on how FINEOS was implemented at TAC in a single phase to replace 19 IT systems with the FINEOS solution.
Andy Albano of Assurant gave an insightful presentation about how Assurant have extracted significant benefits from their FINEOS Disability claims solution. He outlined how the Assurant business team have used the FINEOS configuration tools to deliver crucial productivity gains in throughput over the last four years with zero IT development. He also discussed Assurant’s current project to move to FINEOS Version 6. Assurant have been live with FINEOS for more than five years, and have driven significant process improvement and business change benefits from FINEOS.
Julie Vincent gave a presentation about how Comminsure, Australia's largest insurer and existing claims user, implemented FINEOS for new business straight-through processing. The project targeted a team of 400 new business users and, since go-live, the FINEOS system has supported 40% extra growth in new business throughput with only a 5% increase in workload.
Source: FINEOS Corp.
Jackson Earns 16 Marketing Campaign Awards
November 12, 2008Denver — Jackson National Life Insurance Co. (Jackson), Lansing, Mich., recently announced that its Denver-based marketing department has received 16 awards from various industry and communications organizations. Jackson received recognition for several of the company’s recent multimedia presentations, marketing collateral and direct mail campaigns.
A multimedia presentation on retirement income strategies called “Now What?” was named Best in Show in the Insurance and Financial Communicators Association’s (IFCA) 2008 awards competition. The presentation, which focuses on the new challenges of saving for retirement and presents strategies for establishing lifetime retirement income, earned top honors in the creative writing category. Only 25 entries received the Best in Show designation out of more than 600 submissions from financial services companies nationwide.
Jackson’s marketing team also earned an IFCA Award of Excellence for its LifeGuard Freedom multimedia campaign, which was created to educate advisers and their clients about one of Jackson’s newest optional guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits (GMWB). The company’s “Grand Slam” financial adviser direct mail campaign also received an Award of Excellence from IFCA.
IFCA accepts entries for its annual awards competition from financial services companies that span banking, financial planning, equity brokerage, insurance, investment products, and individual and group savings and retirement plan providers. IFCA is an international organization dedicated to the ongoing professional development of its members in life insurance and related financial services communications.
“These awards recognize Jackson’s ability to find inventive, visually appealing ways to present complex concepts in a format that advisers and their clients can easily understand,” says Dan Starishevsky, SVP, marketing for Jackson National Life Distributors LLC. “The marketing team’s ability to communicate the company’s value proposition effectively and creatively is a key component of increasing Jackson’s presence in today’s competitive marketplace.”
Concurrently, Jackson’s marketing team received a Silver Telly, the highest honor at the 29th annual Telly Awards competition, for “Miracle: A Jackson Story”. Jackson presented the internal communications video, which features several of the company’s wholesalers and members of its senior management team, at the company’s 2008 National Sales Meeting. The Telly Awards, which received more than 13,500 entries from around the world this year, honor outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs, as well as groundbreaking videos and films.
At the 14th Annual Communicators Awards, which recognize creative excellence in advertising, corporate communications and public relations, Jackson captured five Awards of Distinction and an Award of Excellence. Less than 30% of more than 9,000 entries received an award.
The Jackson marketing team was also honored with one of six Awards of Excellence and two Grand Awards at the 20th Annual Apex Awards, which recognize excellence in graphic design, editorial content and success in achieving overall communications effectiveness. This year, Apex received nearly 4,500 entries in 110 categories for consideration.
Source: Jackson National Life Insurance Co.
Dairy State Insurers Seek IT Interns
November 11, 2008Madison, Wis. — American Family Insurance, Madison, and Sentry Insurance, Stevens Point, are among seven prominent Wisconsin companies that have listings already posted for 80 available internships across the state as part of a new online career and job "matching" service.
Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton and Bill Mortimore, acting president and chairman of the board of the Information Technology Association of Wisconsin (ITAWi) launched the service, provided in partnership with Wisconsin Careers (WISCareers).
Miller/Coors in Milwaukee and Nielsen in Green Bay also have made postings for interns, they said.
The service allows companies and organizations with technology internship opportunities to easily submit them to the ITAWi, and for students looking for career opportunities to find them with IT internships.
Lawton noted the service is designed to connect Wisconsin-trained students with jobs in their home state. “It directly addresses pressing issues for Wisconsin by putting people to work in great jobs, letting young people know we want them to imagine their future right here, and building a workforce to attract 21st century businesses and drive economic growth," she said in statement released by ITAWi.
Mortimore has described the online service as “win-win." "Most all companies and organizations in the state need IT support to one degree or another,” he said, “this new Web site will help IT workers get jobs, and companies to get IT workers.”
Wisconsin Careers, part of the Center on Education and Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will provide technical assistance and communicate the program to students throughout the University of Wisconsin system and at the state's technical colleges.
Companies and organizations interested in the Web site can submit their technology internship opportunities for posting to www.itawi.org. They are asked to provide a brief description of the internship position, company and contact information, and then are encouraged to include a Web link to more information about the position.
Internship listings will be posted on a special section of the ITAWi Web site and advertised to college students across the state. All organizations in Wisconsin are invited to submit internship positions to be posted to the Web site.
Source: WTN News
Hyland Honors Insurer Customers
October 20, 2008Las Vegas – Enterprise content management (ECM) software provider Hyland Software honored 12 of its customers with its “RealSolutions” awards at its annual OnBase Training & Technology Conference, held last week in Las Vegas. The 2008 OnBase Training & Technology Conference brought nearly 1,400 attendees from 17 countries together to network over the course of six days.
“This year's RealSolutions award winners exemplify what OnBase is doing for organizations the world over," said Bill Priemer, EVP and COO for Hyland Software, Cleveland.
Hyland’s 2008 RealSolutions insurance award winners are as follows:
Application Integration: Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Co. (Grinnell, Iowa) — The Iowa-based reinsurer uses OnBase to make the mutual reporting review process quicker and more efficient. Duplicate data entry is a thing of the past, and errors have been significantly reduced. Today, employees are doing more with less and better serving their 280 insurer customers in 11 states.
Insurance: The Accident Fund Insurance Company of America (Lansing, Mich.) — The tenth-largest writer of workers’ compensation insurance in the country asked their employees for comments about OnBase. Things like speed, no more lost files, knowing where things are and no more copying files or distributing paper mail were common responses. One customer service representative perhaps said it best, "We can now call up the information needed to support our customers in seconds." Answers like this explain why cycle times have decreased while customer service scores have increased.
Workflow: Mitsui Sumitomo Seguros (Sao Paulo, Brazil) — The Brazilian insurer had an aggressive sales goal—increase sales through retail brokers and the commercial channel by 30%, and used OnBase to help get it there. Within months, workflow cut cycle times in half and tripled processing capacity without adding new staff. The global company is so pleased with the results that it is planning to bring OnBase to several other departments.
The full list of award winners includes:
Application Integration – Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance
Government Solution – Arlington County
Healthcare – Cleveland Clinic
Higher Education – Columbia Mailman School of Public Health
Insurance – The Accident Fund Company of America
Manufacturing – Gallatin
Financial Services – Whatcom Educational Credit Union
Other – American Tire Distributors
OTTC Award – Macomb County Friend of the Court
ROI – American Public University System
Web Technologies – Mennonite Mutual
Workflow — Mitsui
For more information about the Hyland awards, visit https://conference.onbase.com/interior_wide.aspx.
Source: Hyland Software Inc.
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