EIS Blog

Today IBM announced its new family of expert integrated systems, IBM PureSystems. We’re very pleased to be among a select list of IBM’s business partners certified on PureSystems. PureSystems is a new class of systems that combines the flexibility of general purpose systems, the elasticity of cloud and the simplicity of an appliance with integrated expertise to change the experience and economics of IT.

A key benefit of a software-as-a-service deployment is scalability. Indeed, employing well-designed SaaS solutions can offer near linear scalability. The benefit comes not only from the platform and infrastructure design. Sometimes overlooked, the software design itself also plays a big role.

We are pleased to announce the recent appointment of Wilhelm Zeller to Exigen Insurance's board of directors. Mr. Zeller is the former chief executive officer and executive board chairman of Hannover Re.

Roll-out of Auto Products in California Introduces AAA NCNU Insurance Exchange’s Multi-state Business Transformation and Technology Modernization

Exigen Insurance Solutions announces that AAA Northern California, Nevada, and Utah (NCNU) Insurance Exchange has rolled out Exigen Insurance Solutions’ policy administration and billing solutions for its California book of automobile insurance. The deployment is the first stage in providing AAA-branded personal lines insurance to more than 17 million AAA members in the 26 states served by AAA NCNU Insurance Exchange. Nearly one million auto policyholders and 1.7 million cars in California are insured by AAA NCNU.
 
“We are pleased with the results of the roll-out of personal auto in California. Technology modernization is a critical component of our business transformation strategy. It is enhancing our ability to provide great products with exceptional service and competitive pricing,” said Steve George, Chief Operating Officer, AAA NCNU Insurance Exchange. “Exigen Insurance Solutions has shown extraordinary commitment as a strategically aligned business partner to enable us to meet our goals.”
 
The project included replacement of multiple core systems and the installation of a scalable framework for large volume growth and was accomplished in a 13-month time frame. Exigen PolicyCore™ and Exigen BillingCore™ solutions were deployed in an enterprise package that also includes Product Factory™, DistributionCore™, rating, underwriting, business intelligence and reporting, customer relationship management, BPM, document generation, and content management.
 
“We chose Exigen Insurance for modern technology, flexibility, scalability and comprehensiveness of their solutions, and their reputation for implementation success,” said Steve O’Connor, Chief Information Officer, AAA NCNU Insurance Exchange. “Exigen’s on-time delivery proved how critical a fully open and service oriented architecture is to modern insurance IT development.”
 
“To complete a project with this level of complexity and deliver the business benefits in such a short time frame is unprecedented in our industry,” said Alec Miloslavsky, Executive Chairman, Exigen Insurance.
 
“We congratulate AAA NCNU Insurance Exchange for this successful roll-out. Its dedication to improving insurance operations through technology modernization underscores its strong commitment to members,” said Gwen Spertell, President, Exigen Insurance. “We feel honored to be providing a great organization like AAA NCNU Insurance Exchange with solutions that increase operational effectiveness and enhance business agility.”

Our warmest congratulations to customer Mike Anselmo, CIO of Narragansett Bay Insurance Company (NBIC), on his 2011 Elite 8 award. Exigen Insurance has the distinct pleasure this year of offering congratulations to two of our customer CIOs on their 2011 Elite 8 awards. Mike Anselmo is joined by Karl Uphoff, CIO of global consumer lines at Chartis.

The Exigen team offers hearty congratulations to long-time customer Karl Uphoff, CIO of global consumer lines at Chartis, on his well-deserved recognition as a 2011 Elite 8 Award honoree as named by Insurance & Technology.

In a recent blog, Insurance Networking News’ editor Bill Kenealy drew a direct parallel between the rising wave of insurer interest in telematics to a thought-provoking essay in the Wall Street Journal by Netscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen about the propensity of software to “eat” existing business models and even entire industries whole.

There’s quite a bit of confusion about what is what in cloud computing. This is in part due to the absence of a standard set of definitions for the three types of offerings provided in the cloud, namely infrastructure, platform, and software as a service. But I also think there’s confusion about what the “cloud” actually is. As usual with any term that is elevated to “the next big thing” in the market, everyone jumps into the fray, either to claim credit for the wagon or at least jump on the wagon before it leaves the station. This is the moment when the marketing machine is often seen to take over to redefine and repurpose everything to make it part of this new momentum. We’ve seen this trend before when suddenly all enterprise software became SOA and all hardware turned “green.” Now everything runs “in the cloud”. So as not to get caught in the undertow but to catch and ride the actual wave to your advantage, one ought to know the difference between types of currents and be able to read past the surface ripples caused by the hype.

When Hurricane Irene hit Rhode Island with powerful winds and rain on Sunday, August 28, one concern that Narragansett Bay Insurance Company CIO Michael Anselmo did not have was that his company’s policy administration and billing systems would be shut down – paralyzing its ability to respond to customers. NBIC specializes in homeowners insurance in coastal areas of the Northeast, so one thing was certain – they would quickly be thrown into a period of high claims activity.  But you can’t worry about systems you don’t have. NBIC has no core systems technology infrastructure on its premises. All core systems run in multiple private clouds on remote web-based servers. This proved to be a prudent strategy that provided built-in disaster recovery and plenty of capacity for the subsequent increase in Irene-driven system volume.

I often hear the discussion of security in the cloud limited to considerations of public, private or hybrid cloud options when the focus should really be on the degree of security enforced and managed upon a shared network. I suggest thinking of the cloud as a raw but resilient network infrastructure that has to be hardened to the desired degree that is suitable and required for a specific purpose and application, such as core systems. Critical information requires mission critical security and no less. Anyone who is using less security than required is playing with fire and exposing the enterprise and its customers to unmitigated risks. Anyone who uses more security than required is prudent up to a point beyond which the approach quickly becomes wasteful and burdensome.