Insurance-Canada.ca Newsletter Archive
Issue 2002-34: August 27, 2002
This newsletter is for members of the Canadian Insurance Industry, and those who serve it. The newsletter is published weekly, and notes information mostly about the use of the Internet and related technologies in the industry. Some is international, where we feel it is relevant to Canada.
Statistics and Reference
Recovery underway for P&C insurance industry but results still weak -
IBC quarterly "Perspectives"
Financial results for the first half of 2002 for Canada's home, auto and business insurers show signs that a modest
recovery is underway, but the situation is expected to remain weak for at least the next year or two. The latest
edition of Perspective -- the Insurance Bureau of Canada's quarterly analysis of the financial performance of the
property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry -- shows the industry has seen recent improvements. Press release
and the full Perspectives in pdf at
www.insurance-canada.ca/refstat/canada/IBCPersp200208.php.
Technology & e-business
Cyber Threat: There are unnerving new risks in the wired world, by Barbara Aarsteinsen,
ci - Canadian Insurance Magazine.
The growing dependence on electronic exchanges, online transactions and automated processes means that information
has become a key corporate asset and data flow a critical operating function. Communicating and interacting in
cyberspace may be a wondrous thing but it�s fraught with perils. Article at
www.insurance-canada.ca/ebusiness/canada/ciBACyber200208.php.
Sun Life Financial and IBM sign outsourcing agreement.
IBM and Sun Life Financial, Canada's largest life insurer, today announced the signing of a contract that calls for
IBM to provide a wide range of technology services to Sun Life Financial over a seven year period. The contract
is estimated at approximately CDN $250 million. More at www.insurance-canada.ca/ebusiness/announce/IBMSunL200208.php.
Seven Promising Trends for the Internet�s Future: Steve Butler, eMarketer.
Prospects for e-commerce: with the housecleaning that we�ve experienced since March of 2000, the table has been
set for a new period of steady growth for the commercial internet. For example, among those dot-coms that have
survived, most now have much more efficient operations, while traditional companies have a better understanding
of how they can best use the internet to their advantage. And as many of the more tenuous projects have been cast
aside, industry leaders have set their sights on the future with well thought out e-business strategies. Article
at www.insurance-canada.ca/ebusiness/other/eMarketerTrend200208.php.
CSIO Insurance Portal Status Update
Week ending August 23: CSIO and CGU have begun User Acceptance Testing of the rates in the ISI rating engine on the CSIO portal. Over the next two weeks six or seven companies should be testing their rates for Ontario Auto. In parallel ISI is loading the Ontario Property rates they have received. This testing is being operated on the Portal Staging or Final Test environment.
The Portal production environment has been upgraded and is ready now for performance testing.
Claims
Sysinct helps Corporate Management Group change the way the Private Investigation Industry
Processes, Tracks and Manages Assignments.
"Our strategy was to change the way an industry processed, tracked and managed investigative assignments,"
said Brad Myers, president and chief executive officer, CMG. "In order to do this we had to develop an
operating system that could handle the processing and tracking of investigative projects in a much different
way than it was done in the past." More at www.insurance-canada.ca/claims/other/SysinctCMG200208.php.
Managing Relationships
Chubb & Son Expands Relationships with Customers via SAS Intelligence.
"As an insurance company, we have a great deal of data about our customers that is locked away in many
different databases all over the organization," explains Jeff Hoffman, Chubb's vice president of business
intelligence. "We capture details about policies, claims and many different interactions with customers, but
they typically are stored in many different databases. SAS helps us unlock the power of that data and provides
us with better information, both from a tactical and strategic standpoint, that will drive some of our business
goals over the coming years, including revenue growth, operational efficiency and profit."
More at www.insurance-canada.ca/ebusiness/canada/SASChubb200208.php.
from Doug:
I suppose even the PR and Communications people need a holiday too - given the much lower volume of news items in the last week or two, they must be enjoying the wonderful vacation weather. I wish you a good week leading up to Labour Day weekend and then the beginning of school. Enjoy!
Sam Albanese from Albanese Financial Group is speaking at our Sept 13 seminar "Immediate Life Application Processing - The Winding Path." He will give us a nuts and bolts view of how technology is and will address some of the work issues in the life broker distribution channel in his presentation "The Real MGA World." More details at www.insurance-canada.ca/seminars/seminar20020913.php - join us.