Benefitfocus.com and Compaq finalized a business partnership to deliver touch-screen kiosk technology to the employee benefits marketplace. The partnership will consist of Compaq hardware, support, and services, and as the platform for delivery of the Benefitfocus Internet and kiosk-based benefits enrollment and communication application.

Bridium, an application developer of claims workflow solutions for the property and casualty industry, finalized an agreement with Scene Genesis, a P&C software developer and application service provider. The agreement enables Bridium's claims workflow application, Claims3 (formerly ClaimsXL), to offer added task management and digital information gathering functionality, which will be provided by Scene Genesis's proprietary technology, SceneAccess.Net.

Commercial P&C insurance software provider Insurance Information Technologies developed an agreement with Colonial Risk Insurance for the implementation of InsTec's workers' compensation policy processing system for Colonial's Bridgemaster program.

EPolicy.com Insurance Services, which offers insurance products for small businesses and professionals over the Internet, signed an agreement with Zurich North America Small Business to provide Zurich's small business insurance to ePolicy's clients. EPolicy will offer Zurich's small business insurance products, including business owners policies, workers' compensation, commercial auto, and umbrella insurance, nationwide.

BenefitPoint, whose products help with the distribution and management of employee benefits, has formed a partnership with online health insurance destination eHealthInsurance to offer its broker/consultant partners an online vehicle for delivering individual and small-group health insurance to potential customers.

Kemper Insurance and Aquila hope their strategic alliance will expand the global market for weather derivatives and weather risk management products. Weather risk products are used to offset the effects of abnormal weather on business revenues or expenses.

Liberty International Underwriters recently allied with Cogentric, an enabler of e-business viability, to assess e-business sites for companies seeking cyber insurance. Cogentric's software solution will allow LIU to provide its clients with a risk assessment model capable of finding faults in e-business Web infrastructures.

CRM solution provider DWL and business integration software provider CrossWorlds Software allied to market and sell e-business solutions to the insurance, financial services, and consumer products industries. The intended result: an enhanced end-to-end transactional CRM solution powered by CrossWorlds's pre-built integration products.

Born, an e-business and technology solutions consulting firm, and Rural Community Insurance Services (RCIS), a Wells Fargo subsidiary providing insurance products and services to the agricultural industry, have teamed up for RCISag.com, a Web-based, automated system that enables both agricultural producers and insurance agents to streamline crop insurance policy processing.

The National Institute of Financial Services (NIFS), a provider of investment and insurance services for banks, entered a marketing alliance with Insurance Central, an affinity-based third-party direct marketer of life insurance products. The agreement will make Insurance Central service available to NIFS's client banks and the NIFS endorsed state banking associations.

BenefitPort recently signed a national agreement with Metropolitan Life Insurance to market and distribute insurance products through BenefitPort brokers, who will begin selling to employer groups and their employees in May.

Amerisure Insurance has entered a joint venture with Taliant Software to develop a workers' compensation processing system. Amerisure is partnering with Taliant to expand PowerComp, Taliant's component-based workers' compensation software package, into a fully integrated system to manage all policy lines.

AMS Services and Multico are in cahoots, integrating AMS's strategic management systems-AfW, AfW Online, Prime 2000, and Sagitta Browser-with Multico's Personal Lines Comparative Raters. While one-way integration with Prime 2000 exists, the next step includes two-way integration rollouts for AfW, Sagitta Browser, and Prime 2000.

Return to the July 2001 issue's Tech Update