The Chronicle: Issue 2015-11, March 17, 2015


What's Going Through The Intersection of Insurance and Technology?

Does the Digital Direction Have a Devolutionary Detour?
Last week, at the 13th annual Insurance-Canada.ca Technology Conference (see photos), Kimberly Harris-Ferrante, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, said that at present, Canadian consumers are not being easily swayed toward the new digital insurance landscape. At the Davos Economic Forum this past January, Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt quipped that in the not-too-distant future, the Internet will “disappear.” Taken together, these two observations have significant implications for Canadian insurers and brokers.

Harris-Ferrante began by noting that insurers are being drawn to digital solutions because of the promise of transformational results. The key to success, she contends, is the intelligent management of the transformation. The popular press suggests that consumers are in the lead on digital transformation, and are moving away from the traditional methods of insurance acquisition and servicing. But beyond the rhetoric, what are customers doing?

The Intersection: Insurance-Canada.ca Blog
The Intersection

an Insurance-Canada.ca Blog


Technology

ICTC2015 panels reveal insurers need cyber security action plan
At last week's annual Insurance-Canada Technology Conference, there was plenty of cyber risk recognition to go around in insurer, as well as agent/broker, circles. Apparently, even though breaches into the data and emails of Target, Sony, and Home Depot, or by Edward Snowden, were front and center recently, it took the Anthem exposure to really get the attention of insurance executives. According to the experts on panels in Toronto, including individuals from IBM, Marsh Canada, Crawford Canada, SMA, CGI and Oceanwide, the insurance industry in North America is still very much in the “identify” stage when it comes to cyber risk. In fact, at this point, it may even be fair to say the industry “doesn't know what it doesn't know.”

Xpertdoc and e-SignLive by Silanis partner to create secure digital transactions for insurance
Xpertdoc and e-SignLive™ by Silanis have announced a partnership that will see e-SignLive e-signatures integrated into the Xpertdoc customer communications management (CCM) platform and native app for Windows Phone. This integration will help insurance carriers streamline customer communications that require secure delivery, signature and storage, including business applications, beneficiary change forms and claims documents, and will speed up transaction times while ensuring security and regulatory compliance.

TEI/IET Mobility Newsletter: Will Apple's Mobility Include Autos?
Despite Apple's notorious shroud of secrecy, journalists, automotive manufacturers and financial specialists are speculating on what increasingly appears to be Apple's foray into the world of mobility. With CarPlay, Apple is already involved in the automotive space, but the attention paid by the heads of some of the world's leading automotive manufacturing companies at the recent Geneva auto show would seem to indicate that Project Titan is about more than infotainment.

Celent report: “Show me the money” – measuring IT value
Early in 2015, Celent asked a panel of CIOs a series of questions about how they measured IT value and how their IT budget was constructed to deliver it. The aim of the survey was to extract some meaningful and simple IT benchmarks that could be applied to evaluate performance of an IT function. In the new report Measuring IT Value: Show Me the Money, Celent explores the make-up of the typical insurer IT budget with a view towards understanding how value is measured. Areas of focus within the report include IT budget construction, metrics used to measure value, and funding of internal IT projects to generate value. Our analysis is based upon a survey of 46 insurers of varying size and line of business, primarily based in North America.

Policy Management

DMTI Spatial and Intact Financial win prestigious ICTA award for technology implementation of the year
At the 13th annual Insurance-Canada.ca Technology Conference (ICTC2015), DMTI and Intact Financial Corporation were awarded an ICTA technology implementation award for their work in implementing real-time location analytics technology at Canada's largest insurance company, resulting in a 15 per cent reduction in processing time. Judging for the ICTA is based on the positive impact that a specific technology or application of technology has had on business.

Guy Carpenter launches innovative GC ForCas casualty catastrophe model
Guy Carpenter & Company, LLC, a leading global risk and reinsurance specialist, has announced the launch of its new data-driven casualty catastrophe model. GC ForCas is a stochastic modelling platform developed to help insurance carriers better understand their exposure to casualty catastrophe losses resulting from the accumulation of US Commercial Lines insurance policies. The platform utilizes a variety of industry sources including Advisen's® large loss database of more than 250,000 historical losses to anticipate the vast number of scenarios and line of business dependencies. The first GC ForCas component has been released and addresses losses resulting from sudden disasters.

MCCG and Hamilton Township Mutual partner to develop online quoting solution
Hamilton Township Mutual Insurance Company has elected to partner with MCCG to develop an Online Quoting Solution. This joint development project will utilize existing functionality within their Insurance Business Solution (IBS®) implementation, and also leverage HTM's business knowledge with the web frameworks developed by MCCG to develop and implement a complete quoting solution for HTM's clients, brokers and policyholders.

EIS Group congratulates Industrial Alliance for winning ICTA People's Choice Award
EIS Group, a global provider of insurance core systems, is pleased to congratulate Industrial Alliance Auto and Home Insurance (IAAH) for winning the People's Choice Award during an award ceremony at the recent Insurance-Canada.ca Technology Conference (ICTC2015) on March 9. The award recognized the company's accomplishments as related to a core systems modernization project completed collaboratively with EIS Group.

Distribution

Conning study: 2014 mergers & acquisitions in global insurance distribution & services sector
The improving economy, rising exposures, and the need for growth and scale drove the strong distribution and service sector M&A activity in 2014, according to a new study by Conning. The Conning study, Global Insurance Distribution & Services Sector Mergers & Acquisitions: Vying for Domination in 2014, tracks and analyzes both U.S. and non-U.S. insurance industry M&A activity across distribution and services sectors. Specific transactions are detailed, and trends are analyzed across both sectors.

Marketing

Accenture and Adobe launch innovative, pay-per-use digital marketing service to drive greater marketing ROI
At Adobe Summit, Adobe's annual Digital Marketing conference in the U.S., Accenture and Adobe announced the expansion of their alliance to deliver greater marketing ROI to companies through the launch of Accenture Customer Engagement, a cloud-based managed service that simplifies the development, execution and measurement of digital marketing.  Accenture Customer Engagement features digital marketing services from Accenture Interactive wrapped seamlessly around Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions. Accenture will manage both the services and the underlying solutions, freeing marketers from integrating and customizing technology and services and employing personnel trained in the solutions.

Economical Insurance policyholders share their incredible claims journeys
Through a series of brief, compelling videos, Economical policyholders share their real-life stories about the unsettling and sometimes heartbreaking situations they endured and how Economical responded in their time of need. If you've ever had a fire or a flood in your home, or experienced a car accident or the violation of a break-in, you know it can turn your life upside down. In the aftermath, you count on your insurance company to deal with the situation compassionately and smoothly so you can get back on your feet again fast. You want someone to tell you everything is going to be OK, but most of all, you want to believe they are right.

Consumer Information

ingenie car insurance launches in Ontario, exclusively for young drivers
Most young drivers in Ontario say it's unfair that young people pay higher car insurance rates. Now, auto insurance brand ingenie is taking the side of young drivers to help tackle the problem. ingenie is available exclusively to Ontario drivers aged 16 to 24, designed to help them become better, safer drivers and reward them with Good Driving Discounts.

IBC launches new road safety smarthphone app
At a Fraud Prevention Month event at Danforth Collegiate, Insurance Bureau of Canada launched the SafetyMobile App, a road safety phone application that educates users about staged collisions. Members of Toronto Police Service, the Financial Services Commission of Ontario and Victims Services Ontario as well as hundreds of students attended the event.

belairdirect celebrates 60 years of providing simplified insurance to Canadians
This year, belairdirect is celebrating its diamond anniversary. The wholly-owned Canadian company was originally founded by the Diamond Taxicab Association of Montreal Ltd., 60 years ago, in order to serve its 2,000 members, who were having trouble getting their taxis insured. Within the next year, belairdirect will be providing home and car insurance directly to almost 750,000 Canadians.

Insurance Information Institute says American women carry less life insurance than men
Whether or not they hold down a paying job, many women contribute to the economic well-being of their family in important ways – from taking care of household tasks to acting as the primary care giver for children and aging parents. But these contributions are too often left unprotected by life insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute (III). A national poll by wholesaleinsurance.net, an industry news and information resource, finds 43 percent of adult women have no life insurance. And among those who are insured, many are underinsured, carrying roughly a quarter of the coverage necessary for their needs.

CAMH: report examines burden of mental illness and addictions on Ontario youth
A ground-breaking report from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in consultation with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services and the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, examines the gap that exists in population-based mental health research for children and youth in Ontario.


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