Insurers, Self-Insured Organizations Receive awards

More than 1,000 property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry, risk management and technology professionals from approximately 230 organizations attended the conference held Sept. 24-28 in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 2007 award winners include: Accident Fund Insurance Company of America, Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Dominion Resources Inc., Frankenmuth Mutual Insurance Companies, Great American Insurance Company, The Hartford, Jack in the Box Inc., Lakeland Regional Medical Center, MetLife Auto & Home, National Interstate Insurance Company, Swiss Re’s North American Specialty Group, Northern Neck Insurance Company, OneBeacon Insurance Group, Safety Insurance Company, State Auto Insurance Companies, Vulcan Materials Company and Western National Insurance Company.

Accident Fund Insurance received CSC’s Well Connected Award, which singles out one organization for its leadership across all four award categories: Innovation Community, Industry Leadership, Project Management Leadership and Technical Excellence. The company won this “best of show” honor for its leading role in enhancing CSC’s POINT IN Agency Link software. With these enhancements, agents have Web-browser-based access to their insurance administration system’s back-office functions and can generate policy declarations in real time over the Web.

“CSC’s software and staff continue to play a major role in supporting Accident Fund’s national expansion,” said Liz Haar, Accident Fund president and chief executive officer. “Our involvement in CSC’s Innovation Community program and interactions with other insurers at events such as CSC Connect has allowed us to improve efficiencies for our agents and our internal operations.”

Companies that received CSC’s Innovation Community Award, which recognizes organizations whose software enhancement projects have benefited the entire user community, include:
Chubb Group, which worked with CSC to develop a new component of CSC’s Legal Solutions Suite that automates the bill review process for invoices submitted by non-panel outside counsel. Chubb Group also worked with CSC to create the Legal e-Bill online tutorial, which offers real-time assistance to law firms submitting invoices.

Safety Insurance, which is interfacing CSC’s Series II policy administration system with a range of CSC and third-party software to create a policy rating engine built with an advanced, open-standards architecture. This engine will help Safety quickly calculate premium rates for homeowners’ insurance in Massachusetts.

Western National Insurance, which worked with CSC to develop a remittance processing enhancement to CSC’s POINT IN software that allows companies to automatically create, balance and post bulk payments.

Lakeland Regional Medical Center, which used CSC’s RISKMASTER claims and risk information system to create a secure, online incident reporting system. The system, which can be viewed only by designated staff to protect patient confidentiality, helps speed identification and correction of safety issues.

Companies that received CSC’s Industry Leadership Award, which recognizes organizations for the innovative use of CSC’s software products or services, include:
OneBeacon Insurance Group, the first company in the U.S. insurance market to successfully implement and use CSC’s Precedent ID software, which promotes claims management consistency and best practices.

State Auto Insurance, which used an XML-based architecture to upgrade Series II with components of CSC’s Exceed and Agency Link software. With this upgrade, agents can use real-time, straight-through processing over the Web for a wide range of insurance transactions.

North American Specialty Group, a subsidiary of Swiss Re, which developed a contract underwriting application that helps agents reduce a company’s exposure to risk by pulling information from CSC’s POINT IN software to better track bond transaction data and summary underwriting information.

Jack in the Box Inc., which tailored CSC’s RISKMASTER software to better track and manage event reports at its guest relations and quality hotline call centers. The enhancements also make it easier to transfer claims to the organization’s general liability team.

Winners were also named for two new award categories this year: Project Management Leadership and Technical Excellence.

Companies that won CSC’s Project Management Leadership Award for implementing best practices to achieve project deliverables in an innovative manner include:
MetLife Auto & Home, which improved its company-wide reporting by working with CSC to create an interface between litigation financials in MetLife Home & Auto’s internal databases and CSC’s Legal Solutions Suite software. CSC also worked with MetLife Home & Auto on other enhancements such as the ability to simultaneously handle multiple lawsuits associated with a particular claim number.

Frankenmuth Mutual Insurance, which dramatically improved the speed and effectiveness of its implementation of CSC’s Exceed software through the application of CSC’s project management methodologies. This helped Frankenmuth deliver successive milestones in less time.

Northern Neck Insurance, which maximized limited resources with project techniques such as scope definition, clear change-control guidelines, and monthly tracking of budget and earned value to meet its project deliverables in implementing POINT IN and Agency Link for its homeowners’ and personal auto lines.

Dominion Resources, which kept its schedule for implementing CSC’s RISKMASTER on target – despite losing an internal and external project manager – by applying project management best practices and executive oversight.

Companies that received CSC’s Technical Excellence Award for the best example of systems engineering and architecture, systems integration or technology management in connection with a CSC solution include:
Great American Insurance for enhancements to CSC’s Legal Matter Manager, a component of Legal Solutions Suite, that simplified the search-of-panel counsel function to choose appropriate legal representation.

The Hartford for supporting new industry-standard large-grained message interfaces in CSC’s Exceed that are used in The Hartford’s business-to-business transaction gateways, providing easy access to insurance information for agents, policyholders and third parties.

National Interstate Insurance, which demonstrated a creative approach to third-party system changes to its POINT IN All Lines Rating files, ensuring that updates are kept within normal processes and necessary controls remain in place.

Vulcan Materials, which worked with CSC to enhance RISKMASTER to track and report legal matters in a second database. This enables users to centralize legal costs and integrate legal case information with third-party human resources and accounts payable systems.

“In this, our third year of Connect Awards, we received even more submissions from our client community to consider,” said Ray August, president of the Property and Casualty Division within CSC’s Financial Services Sector. “This year’s award winners not only improved their operational results with CSC’s software and services, they also demonstrated high degrees of innovation and cooperation with fellow members of our user community.” -CSC