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Life Health > Life Insurance

Products At LOMA Forum Focus On Streamlining Workflow, Cutting Costs

By Staff Writer

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By Ara C. Trembly

San Antonio

While 2003 marked the swan song of the LOMA Systems Forum as a stand-alone conference, vendors here were exhibiting a variety of wares designed to help insurance offices enhance workflow and tweak the bottom line.

In its final year, the conference attracted roughly the same number of attendees as it had in 2002, according to one source at Atlanta-based LOMA. In 2004, the Systems Forum will be combined with Pearl River, N.Y.-based ACORDs annual technology conference in a joint conference to take place May 22 through 25 in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, on the show floor at this years event, Genelco Software Systems, a division of Liberty Insurance Services Corporation, announced version 2.0 of its front-end portal, Genelco LifeView.

According to St. Louis-based Genelco, LifeView 2.0 “includes functionality to streamline back-office workflow, enabling agents and home office personnel to respond more quickly to specific requests.”

Version 2.0 includes a pending underwriting requirements function, designed for agents who need to know where a policy is in the underwriting process, the company explained. Agents can review a checklist with comment fields to see what steps have been taken and what steps remain to finish the underwriting.

A feature called Activity Alert is designed to enhance communication between the home office and producers, the company noted. “Activity Alert allows all those who touch a particular policy to notify each other when a task is complete or when a new task needs to be handled,” said Genelco. “While working in Genelco LifeView, agents and administrators will post alerts and see real-time messages indicating how many unread alerts are waiting for their response.”

“This new release enhances workflow by telling the team of people what tasks need to be done and who needs to do them,” stated Susan Wagy, sales support and marketing director for Genelco. “It adds to the ability to communicate changes within back-office processing.” She added that the product helps link the back end to the front office.

More information is available at www.genelco.com.

Two new technology products designed to help insurers “streamline business processes, reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction” were introduced by New York-based Accenture LLP.

The first product, the Accenture Insurance Solution, is a multi-language software that insurers can use to help manage a variety of functions, the company said. The product includes components for product development and policy administration, as well as rating, billing, processing, financial reporting and customer acquisition management.

The second introduction, Accenture underwriting components, “comprises diagnostics and rules-based technology to help support more consistent underwriting decisions and automates routine administrative processes,” said Accenture. The result, the company noted, can be lower costs. This product can also provide data for customer segmentation and “more tailored products and services.”

Accenture noted that because the products are based on existing components, they can be implemented “in as little as nine to 12 months.”

Further details are available at www.accenture.com.

InSystems Correspondence, a Web-based correspondence management product “that automates and accelerates the creation and management of personalized correspondence,” was launched by Markham, Ontario, Canada-based InSystems.

According to the company, the new product also supports the distribution of created correspondence through multiple channels, including printing and mailing, fax and e-mail.

InSystems said its product will provide “faster time to results and higher ROI.” Those using Correspondence can increase productivity by streamlining the correspondence process for customer service representatives, managers and system administrators. They can also reduce the volume of inquiries and problems resulting from poor correspondence, the company noted.

Further, operating costs can be reduced via smaller printing and mailing costs, less call center volume, less manual intervention and less training needed to produce correspondence, said InSystems. By delivering branded, consistent, accurate and professional correspondence via whatever channels customers prefer, users of Correspondence can also achieve improved customer and channel satisfaction, the company added.

InSystems said its product automates ad hoc correspondence, including personalized letters. “Each department or workgroup either selects an appropriate predefined letter, builds a letter using approved content or creates a free-form letter online from scratch using InSystems Correspondence and Microsoft Word.”

Further details are available at www.insystems.com.

In other news from LOMA, Computer Sciences Corporation announced separate agreements with Swiss Re Life & Health America Inc. and e-Nable Corporation that will add automatic underwriting systems and services to CSCs nbAccelerator life insurance new business product.

Austin, Texas-based CSC said it has assumed development, maintenance and North American sales responsibilities for Swiss Res two major underwriting support systems, Magnum and LUS, and that their capabilities will be incorporated into nbAccelerator.

“CSCs technology and expertise in new business processing will allow us to focus on Swiss Res core competencies–reinsurance, risk assessment and underwriting–instead of the development and support of systems for use by third parties,” said Chris Stroup, CEO of Swiss Re Life & Health America.

CSC also said nbAccelerator will be the technology framework for e-Nables life insurance services, “which include real-time, one-stop access to data sources for the underwriting process.”

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, March 17, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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