Insurance Networking News - November/December 2011

Insurers to Invest in Analytics

ACCOrDING TO NEW rESEArCH FrOM ACCENTUrE AND SAS, 72 percent of business leaders will increase spending on business analytics next year, and two of the top three investment priorities cited are improving analytic skills of current employees (70 percent) and hiring analytical talent (52 percent).

The Accenture SAS Analytics Group, which focuses on financial, health care and public services, surveyed 258 business leaders. Sixty percent admitted to not having the right analytical business skills to effectively use the technologies in place. More than a quarter of respondents acknowledged their analytical projects were underperforming, and the main reason cited for this was inadequate analytical skills. -Justin Stephani

Idaho Farm Bureau
Insurance Selects
Thunderhead NOW
Farm Bureau Mutual Insur-
ance Co. of Idaho (Idaho
Farm Bureau Insurance) has
selected Thunderhead’s NOW
platform in an attempt to
streamline communications
and document generation out-
put across the enterprise, and
ultimately, help the company
to deliver better customer
service.

Editorial Index Accenture 15, 25 Aetna 6 Allstate 11, 15 Alpha Insurance 11 American Financial Group 12 American Insurance Association 14 American National 26 Aon Benfield 15 Apache Hadoop 10 Association for Information 21 and Image Management Canada Life Assurance Co. 21 Capital District Physicians’ 6 Health Plan Celent 12 Ceres 15 Church Pension Group 13 CNA 18 Computer Sciences Corp. 17 Connecticut General Life 6 Insurance Co. Cover-All Technologies 26

CSC
Deloitte
Duck Creek
EmblemHealth
Embrace Pet Insurance
EMC
Empire HealthChoice
Excellus Health Plan
Experian QAS
Facebook
FBL Financial
Federal Insurance Office
FICO
Financial Stability
Oversight Council
FIS Software
Flickr
Gartner
Google
The Gorman Group
Great American Insurance
Harleysville

12 13, 14

15 6

19, 20, 21

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information to specific customers,” said Adam Waldron, IS Director at Idaho Farm Bureau Insurance.

Thunderhead added that Idaho Farm Bureau Insurance’s in-house legacy communications and document output system only supported print, lacked flexibility, and could not appropriately involve the business process owners in the document-generation process. The print process was static and fixed, making it difficult to add or change information or incorporate new customer communications into the system.

According to the vendor,
NOW will reduce Idaho Farm
Bureau Insurance’s paper
output, enable increased
user control and help the
company to remain compli-
ant with changing regulations
by updating processes and
streamlining communication
workflows across the entire
business. It also gives Idaho
Farm Bureau the flexibility
needed to respond quickly to
market demands, and it will
easily integrate with other
technologies deployed by the
firm, including Guidewire and
ImageWrite.

Chooses Policy
Admin Platform from
MajescoMastek

MajescoMastek, the U.S. subsidiary of global technology solutions provider Mastek Ltd., announced that Wawanesa Life Insurance Co. has selected Elixir North America as its policy administration system for individual life and annuity products.

According to MajescoMas-
tek, Wawanesa Life’s goal is
to replace its current multiple
legacy mainframe systems
with a more modern, stream-
lined technology platform.
Wawanesa Life selected the
Elixir solution because of its
ability to meet the carrier’s
end-to-end objectives of
straight-through automated
processing, reduced product
development time and en-
hanced customer service.

Harvard Pilgrim Launches Oracle Claims Adjudication

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Inc., a private health plan, went live in October with the first phase of its new claims adjudication solution implemented on the Oracle Health Insurance claims platform.

Oracle says the application is expected to process about

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care 25, 26 HealthNow 6 Humana 6 i2 Group 18 IBM 13 Idaho Farm Bureau Insurance 25 IDI T I.D.I Technologies 15 iGATE Patni 10 Inlite Research Inc. 20 International Data Corp. 11 i Pipeline 26 IVANS 28 Jewelers Mutual 12 Kaplan Compliance Solutions 15 Keefe, Bruyette & Wood 14 KPMG 18 Lexis/Nexis 23 LinkedIn 28 MajescoMastek 25 MetLife 14, 17, 18 Microsoft 12, 20, 21 Mitchell International 10

Mutual of Omaha 12
Myspace 28
National Alliance Research 24
Academy
National Insurance Crime Bureau 17
Nationwide 18
NetApp 13
NitroPDF Inc. 20
North American Pet Health 21
Insurance Association
Novarica 10, 12, 15, 17, 22
Oracle 13, 25, 26
Packaged Facts 21
Pew Research Center 11
Philadelphia Insurance 12
Progressive 15
Prudential 14
RLI Corp. 21
Sapiens 15
SAS Institute 10, 18, 25
SBLI USA Mutual Life 10
SharePoint 21

Sircon Society of Actuaries State Farm Swiss Re Sword Insurance TDWI Thomas H. Lee Thunderhead Travelers Tumblr Twitter UnitedHealth USAID Vermont Mutual Vertafore Wawanesa Life Insurance Work At Home Vintage Employees XL Insurance Group Yammer Youtube Zurich Services Corp.

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Note: Company names comprising this listing are presented as a courtesy to our readers, and at press, may be subject to change. Company names can also be searched at www.insurancenetworking.com.