Real-time transaction capability directly from agency management systems. The company is in production for quoting for business owners policies, commercial auto, workers compensation, and umbrella insurance and also offers electronic policy view, claim loss runs, and billing inquiry. Travelers was the first insurance carrier to launch this technology using the ACORD XML standards.

Issue Express Net, a browser-based real-time quote, rate, and issuance system.

A service center that functions as an extension of an agencys servicing operations, offering a variety of customer service levels.
In personal lines, Travelers provides automation options accessible through Agent HQ. Travelers is one of the first carriers implementing real-time policy quoting directly from agency management systems. It offers ATLAS3, an Internet-based automation system that enables real-time policy quoting and issuing. The carrier also is a leader in download capabilities that automatically update an agency management system with new policy data the next business day. Download capabilities are available for new business, renewals, endorsements, cancellations and reinstatements, direct bill commission statements, and direct bill status. Travelers customer care center, staffed by licensed insurance professionals, helps an agency offload service functions such as providing policy information and processing policy changes. Extensive training also is offered to help transition agency staff from service functions to sales.

Whos Using What
Commerce Insurance Group has renewed its business process outsourcing contract for an additional six years with CGI, which will provide the carrier with full policy processing services as well as an agency interface tool, application support and maintenance, regulatory support, systems consulting, and document management services. In addition, CGI has signed a 10-year outsourcing contract with Kanawha Insurance Company. CGI will provide infrastructure management, data center services, and application maintenance and development.

Mercury Insurance has selected a sales effectiveness solution from Vuepoint to provide product and corporate information to employees, partners, and agents.

State Auto Insurance is using the new Web Bridge technology from Applied Systems to offer real-time billing, policy, and claims inquiries to State Auto agents who use The Agency Manager or The Agency Manager Vision Series software from Applied.

Mass Mutual Life Insurance Group has selected a system from COSS Development Corporation to develop a point-of-sale illustration system for the carriers variable annuity product.

Canadian insurer National Life has implemented SOLCORP/E-LINKS from SOLCORP to provide a data- transmission bridge to the carriers back-office policy administration system. In addition, SOLCORP has entered into a license agreement with the Great-West Life Assurance Company to use the software providers INGENIUM solution.

Assurity Life Insurance has licensed the LifePRO Life Insurance Company Administration tool from Professional Data Management Again (PDMA). The PDMA system will replace the carriers mainframe legacy system.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina has installed the fibre channel storage transport service from Time Warner Telecom to link the carriers data center with a disaster recovery site.

Washington State Transit Insurance Program, a self-insurance pool, has begun using MetaFrame Conferencing Manager from Citrix Systems.

Travelers Property Casualty Corp. and InStar Corporation, an agency management system provider, are using IVANS Transformation Station to provide real- time e-service capabilities for loss runs, electronic policy review, and billing inquiry for small-commercial policies.

Interstate Insurance Group has completed a combined integration with ePolicy Solutions and Docucorp International for Web-based rating for two of the carriers six major commercial lines.

Preferred Mutual Insurance has signed a licensing agreement with AscendantOne to use a comprehensive property/casualty suite of sales and service solutions, including browser-based rate-quote-issuance, underwriting, policy administration, and account management.

OneBeacon Insurance Group has selected a new claims solution from EasyLink to support the carriers claims operation.

Web Site
Aetna Recognized at Tech Conference
Aetnas two Web sites recently were honored at the Leveraging Technology and the Internet for Performance and Profitability Conference in Phoenix. Aetna InteliHealth (www.intelihealth.com), the insurers online consumer health-information resource, and Aetna Navigator, the companys self-service Web site for members, received eHealthcare Leadership Awards for Health/ Healthcare Content and Interactive Site, respectively. Aetna InteliHealth and Aetna Navigator are part of Aetnas larger strategy to offer a full range of self-service and round-the-clock options for accessing information and doing business with us, says Mark Bertolini, head of Aetnas e-commerce initiatives.

Aetna InteliHealth was the winner of the Platinum eHealthcare Leadership Award for Best Health/Healthcare Content in the Consumer General Health Site division. Aetna Navigator was awarded a Silver Award for Best Interactive Site in the HMO/PPO/Other Insurers category. Aetnas self-service initiative includes Web sites and e-connectivity options where members, physicians, physician practice managers, and other healthcare professionals can receive information and answers to many questions and complete transactions that are central to doing business with Aetna.

In addition to Aetnas Web site awards, Aetna Voice Advantage (AVA), the insurers member and physician self-service telephone system, recently was recognized by ScanSoft Inc., a supplier of speech and imaging solutions, as the winner of the 2003 Best Practices Competition. AVA enables callers to use normal speech to hear personal claims and coverage information and perform self-service transactions around the clock without needing to speak to a customer service professional.

Aetna InteliHealth features content developed through relationships with Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine. The site offers health information that consumers, in consultation with their healthcare professionals, may use to take an active role in healthcare decisions. Visitors to Aetna InteliHealth can find interactive tools and information on specific diseases and conditions, complementary and alternative medicine, nutrition, and more. Aetna Navigator serves approximately three million Aetna members with secure round-the-clock access to claim status and payment information, Aetna participating physicians, healthcare decision-support tools such as Price-A-Drug and the Hospital Comparison Tool, and transactions such as requesting ID cards or changing primary-care providers.

In receiving this award, Aetna Navigator was cited for its ability to recognize registered members and prefill personal information to simplify physician searches, drug formulary checks, and e-mail correspondence with member services. Members also can access health information, including Aetna InteliHealth, directly from Aetna Navigator. The eHealth-are Leadership Awards program was developed in 2000 by eHealthcare Strategy & Trends, an Internet resource published by Health Care Communications. The awards program received more than 1,200 entries that were judged by 104 industry experts.

Comdex Report
Gates: New Software Infrastructure Will Enable Optimized Business

By Ara C. Trembly

Insurance and other industries always are searching for new and better ways to do business, and not surprisingly, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates believes software advances will lead the way. Delivering the keynote address at the Comdex Global Technology Expo held in Las Vegas in November, Gates told an audience of several thousand the industry still needs a platform to enable faster and more efficient commerce and e-commerce. This platform will be built on an infrastructure of software that delivers what he called seamless computing.

Gates focused on various seams or constraints that have held back development of a better infrastructure for business. In the 1980s, the problem was hardware was not sufficiently developed to allow rapid development, he explained. In the 1990s, hardware advanced, but there were constraints on connecting devices until the Internet matured enough at the end of that decade. People thought that was the last boundary, the last thing to be solved, said Gates. They were wrong.

In the current decade, which Gates has dubbed The Digital Decade, the challenge is to overcome the seams to establish software connections that will enable better commerce, he noted. Todays seams include boundaries that prevent technology devices from communicating and others that keep different software applications from working cooperatively, Gates observed. Many things are not done because of these difficulties, he said. You are going to have many devices; they should be connected. Once we get rid of the seams, Gates asserted, we can deliver all the scenarios we dreamed about.
How will that happen? According to Gates, It requires a lot of investment in research and in building new software applications. He added companies should work with industries that are conducting pioneering research, while standards organizations need to move into new frontiers to better enable communication. He focused particularly on boundaries between corporations, where the ease of moving information in a secure way is still way too difficult. We have to schematize data in standard ways.

Gates also spoke of Microsofts initiative to provide trustworthy computing, providing reliability and security. These are software problems, and theyre not easy software problems, he noted. According to Gates, Microsofts most acute focus is security. Its the largest thing were doing. He emphasized software must be kept up to date with the latest patches to prevent security breaches and added the software maker is working toward providing automated updates to make the process more manageable for customers.

Spam, or unauthorized commercial e-mail, is another tough problem for the security of the software infrastructure, said Gates, noting spammers exploit e-mail to find a few customers. Even if they only get one in 10,000 potential customers interested, the proposition is economic for the spamming company because the cost of sending mass e-mails is so low. Gates said advances in anti-spam software, along with legislative efforts aimed at stopping spam, will shift the tide and make it no longer attractive to be a spammer.

Another topic that was briefly discussed is the much-awaited next version of Microsoft Windows, code-named Longhorn. Noting that Longhorn is a very ambitious piece of work, Gates said the company has not set a time frame for its release. Theres still a lot to be done, he stated, and much of what will happen will aid the cause of seamless computing.

One new feature in Longhorn is called Stuff Ive Seen, which cuts across the seams between applications to find almost anything a user has accessed recently, regardless of where the information came from. Information from e-mail, Web pages, files, and even handwritten notes can be easily accessed, said a Microsoft spokesperson.

Another new feature of the system in development is implicit query, which proactively finds information related to whatever a user is working on, without the user having to ask.

Ara C. Trembly is senior editor, technology, for the National Underwriter property/casualty and life and health editions.

Comdex Report
Spam Is a Productivity Killer
Spamunsolicited e-mail, usually for commercial purposesis not only a nuisance for corporate users, it is a drain on productivity, according to a panel of experts at the recent Comdex 2003 Global Technology Marketplace, held in Las Vegas.

Panel leader Dave Piscitello, president of Core Competence, Inc., a network management consulting firm based in Chester Springs, Pa., noted that in addition to its unsolicited status, spam often is advertising for dubious, offensive, potentially illegal products and services. Often, he added, the message is a scam involving some get-rich-quick scheme or soliciting donations to phony causes.

However, Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, Inc., Black Diamond, Wash., asserted the significant problem for businesses is their employees may each spend more than six days a year dealing with the spam they receive. For most people, between 50 percent and 65 percent of all e-mail is spam, he said, noting his companys research found users consistently identify spam as their number-one problem. Its grown so quickly; its a very serious problem, he stated.

While some 80 percent of organizations have some form of anti-spam technology in place, even protected employees will spend as much as 80 minutes per 1,000 e-mails (about 2.4 work days a year) dealing with spam, Osterman emphasized. Unprotected employees will spend about 200 minutes per 1,000 e-mails (6.1 work days per year).

Spam is not free speech, Piscitello claimed. It is costly for organizations. It also is costly to the technology community, because it turns a lot of consumers away from technology, he added. Spammers and anti-spam technologists constantly are playing a game of cat and mouse, he pointed out, with spammers working hard to find ways to bypass anti-spam filters.
When it comes to such filters, however, Osterman said his research indicates 40 percent of spam-filter users say the products performance is degrading over time. He also noted, Early-generation systems are not as effective as current products. With spam filters, Osterman added, false positiveslegitimate e-mails identified as spamare more of a problem than spam itself, because they could result in missing important e-mails. An acceptable level of false positives is three percent, he asserted, while one percent is good, and the ideal is .0002 percent. Having zero false positives is possible, he said, but that requires a lot of tuning.

He also pointed out anti-spam laws have been passed in 28 states, but they have been difficult to enforce. One reason is they dont apply to offshore spammers. Often, he added, such laws are too vague to allow judicial interpretation.

The percentage of e-mail that is spam will increase, Osterman predicted while noting protected users will not experience the increase to the same extent. One area of particular concern will be increased pornography spam, which could result in potential workplace claims (sexual harassment) and involve enterprise liability for internal and external e-mail, he said.

Spam volume and tactics represent a real threat to e-mail uptime and quality of service, stated Scott Petry, founder of Postini, an e-mail security company located in Redwood City, Calif. He said his company has processed 148 million e-mail messages for its clients, finding about 111 million, or 75 percent of those messages, were spam.

People send out spam for profit and viruses for sport, noted Paul Judge, chief technology officer for CipherTrust, Inc., a security solutions developer based in Alpharetta, Ga. Anti-spam technologies primarily offer detection and protection that includes white lists (lists of acceptable e-mail senders) and also may contain a challenge/response mechanism. Such a mechanism, he explained, requires the sender answer a question, thereby ensuring the sender is human, rather than a computer running through a list.

Asked for general tips on dealing with spam, the panel recommended the following:

Do not respond to any spam e-mail. This allows the spammer to validate your e-mail address.
Never click a remove me from your list link, since this also enables the spammer to validate your address.
Use a separate e-mail address for online commercial transactions.

By Ara C. Trembly

Editors Note: As this story was going to press, federal legislation was passed that would outlaw some junk e-mail and create a do-not-spam registry.