Insurance companies State Farm Insurance, York Fire & Casualty, and Sun Life Financial all received Best in Class awards. State Farm won for its new Pocket Agent, an iPhone application that enables policyholder account access and claim reporting. York Fire & Casualty received the ICTA for its implementation of a technology facilitating real-time processing of labor-intensive policy change transactions with its brokers. This technology is provided by iter8, a Canadian technology provider. Sun Life Financial received the ICTA in the life insurer category for its implementation of technology from IBM to address data archiving and data privacy.

Service provider ServiceMaster of Canada won a Best in Class ICTA for its Mobile Service Manager, a Web-hosted handheld computer with different modules that enables case and asset management from the site.

Technology provider Keal Technology received an ICTA for integration of BlueC call recording software with insurance brokers' office management systems. Guidewire Software received the ICTA for insurance carrier software, based on implementations of its ClaimCenter software at two insurers: The Cooperators and Dominion of Canada.

Two organizations received honorable mention. Pembridge Insurance was acknowledged for enabling a variety of broker transactions using technology from Brovada as was solution provider iter8 for its work with York Fire & Casualty.

According to Insurance-Canada.ca principal Doug Grant, the awards were developed to celebrate organizations that successfully realize the benefits of technology in improving service, reducing costs, and increasing productivity for insurance professionals. "Insurance is a transaction- and paper-intensive business that can be positively impacted by the intelligent application of technology," says Grant. "We want to acknowledge organizations that invest in solutions for the benefit of their customers, employees, and shareholders."

Insurance-Canada.ca Inc. is a source of information for Canadian insurance consumers and professionals. A list of winners and related photos can be viewed in the ICTA section of the organization's Web site, www.insurance-canada.ca.