Navy Mutual Launches New Life and Annuity Insurance System Based on Accenture's Software

Press release:

August 20, 2012

Navy Mutual Launches New Life and Annuity Insurance System Based on Accenture's Software

 

NEW YORK; Aug. 20, 2012 – The Navy Mutual Aid Association has gone live with the Accenture Life Insurance Platform, the life and annuity insurance software suite from Accenture (NYSE: ACN). The Platform supports Navy Mutual’s life and annuity product configuration, new business, underwriting and policy administration processing needs.

 

Navy Mutual selected the system, which was deployed earlier this month, to support growth, while enhancing overall customer service and keeping operating costs low.

 

"The new system, which supports virtually all of our processing needs across our business, is a key component of our growth agenda," said Bruce Engelhardt, president and CEO of Navy Mutual Aid Association. "We expect the Accenture Life Insurance Platform to deliver simplified product development functionality based on pre-configured processes, as well as real-time testing capabilities that should allow us to respond even more effectively to changing market conditions."

 

As part of the project, Accenture converted 138,000 policies from Navy Mutual's legacy systems using the Accenture Insurance Data Migration Factory, an end-to-end data migration solution. This conversion allows the insurer to handle all new business and service existing policies on a single platform.

 

“Cost pressures and market uncertainty continue in the life insurance business,” said Mitchel F. Ludwig, product line lead of Accenture Software for life insurance. “To compete more effectively, insurers must move new products to market as rapidly and cost-efficiently as possible, but that goal is often compromised by an aging and restrictive technology environment. Navy Mutual's new platform will enable the association to more easily create products that meet its members' needs and bring these to market faster.”

 

“This go-live also demonstrates that a project that involves the full replacement of multiple legacy systems and the migration of all existing policies onto a single modern platform can be realistic, affordable and achievable.”

 

About Navy Mutual Aid Association

The Navy Mutual Aid Association serves those protecting our nation.  Navy Mutual continues to support that mission today by providing exceptional life insurance and annuity products, assisting sea service members and their survivors in securing the federal benefits to which they are legally entitled, and providing education on matters of financial security which are specifically tailored to the military member and family. Navy Mutual is a nonprofit, federally tax-exempt, mutual benefit Veterans Service Organization which was established in 1879 by sea service members for the purpose of providing financial protection to the sea service member and family.

 

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 249,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries.  Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world's most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments.  The company generated net revenues of US$25.5 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011.  Its home page is www.accenture.com.

 

Accenture Software combines deep technology acumen with industry knowledge to develop differentiated software products.  It offers innovative software-based solutions to enable organizations to meet their business goals and achieve high performance. Its home page is www.accenture.com/software. For Life Insurance software, its home page is www.accenture.com/lifesoftware.

 

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Progressive’s Side of the Insurance Case That Blew Up on the Internet

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Saturday, August 18, 2012

Progressive’s Side of the Insurance Case That Blew Up on the Internet

By RON LIEBER

It isn’t often that automobile insurance becomes the subject of nationwide outrage. So when it does happen, it’s worth a peek inside all our policies to figure out how they actually work and what the insurance companies are up to behind the scenes.

This week, a man named Matt Fisher took to his Tumblr site to call out Progressive, which insured his sister, Katie, two years ago when she died in a car accident. The company recently sent its lawyer to court — not to assist her estate but to argue that the driver of the other car, who had a suspended license and little insurance, was the innocent party.

Or, as Mr. Fisher put it, “My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer in Court.”

The outrage on social media came swiftly, and it was brutal. Progressive’s initialpublic comments parsing the definition of “defendant” only opened up the company to further vitriol.

After several requests, I finally got Progressive to come to the phone and explain in detail, out loud and on the record, why it chose to fight Ms. Fisher’s family in court.

In the end, the saga of Ms. Fisher and her family isn’t just about whether Progressive made a needless mess of its reputation this week. And it’s not simply about whether everyone should drop their Progressive policies in protest either, as scores of people have threatened to do. We also need to take a close look at our own coverage and determine whether we have a fundamental misunderstanding of how our various auto insurance policies actually work.

Before @fishermatt became a social media phenomenon, he was a devastated older brother. His sister was just 24 when she died in Baltimore with two degrees from Johns Hopkins University to her name and nothing but promise in front of her.

The insurance machinery began its work relatively quickly. Ms. Fisher had $100,000 in liability coverage per person in this accident, and three people (and the lawyers negotiating for them) wanted a piece of it: a passenger in her car, the driver of the car that hit her and a passenger in that car.

Progressive sized up its legal risks. Three individuals thought Ms. Fisher had run a red light — the police officer who filed the accident report (but who did not witness it), Ms. Fisher’s passenger and the driver of the other vehicle. On the other hand, one eyewitness said that it was the other driver who ran the light.

At that point, Progressive chose to pay the liability claims. “If we determine that we shouldn’t pay any third parties, our insured can get sued and be responsible for any amount over the limit,” said Marcia Marsteller, the business leader in Progressive’s legal department for claims. “If we make the wrong call and don’t pay them and perhaps we should have, there is an issue for her estate.”

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.

Final Baltimore Police Officer Pleads Guilty in Towing Extortion Scheme

Final Baltimore Police Officer Pleads Guilty in Towing Extortion Scheme 
Fifteen Police Officers Have Pleaded Guilty in the Extortion Scheme in Federal Court and Another Officer Pleaded Guilty in State Court

U.S. Attorney’s OfficeMarch 22, 2012

District of Maryland(410) 209-4800

BALTIMORE—Baltimore Police officer Jaime Luis Lugo, age 36, of Aberdeen, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to commit and committing extortion under color of official right in connection with a scheme in which brothers Hernan Alexis Moreno and Edwin Javier Mejia paid Lugo and over 50 other officers to arrange for their car repair company, Majestic, rather than a city-authorized company, to tow vehicles from accident scenes and make repairs.

The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein, Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld, III.

According to his guilty plea, beginning in 2010, Moreno and Mejia agreed with Lugo that while acting in his capacity as Baltimore Police Department (BPD) officer at accident scenes, Lugo would contact Moreno and Mejia for towing and repair services for vehicles even though Majestic was not an authorized tow company for the city of Baltimore. In exchange, Mejia or Moreno would pay Lugo $300 for each vehicle that arrived at Majestic. Lugo then began to refer vehicles on a regular basis to Moreno in exchange for payment, usually by contacting Moreno by cell phone.

Specifically, while on the scene of an accident, Lugo would contact Moreno and provide him with the details of the accident, including the type and extent of damage to the car or cars, insurance information, and contact information for the car’s owner. It was agreed that Lugo, while performing his official duties as a police officer, would persuade accident victims to allow their cars to be towed or otherwise delivered to Majestic by telling the victims that Majestic could tow the car, provide repair services, help with the insurance claim, assist in getting a rental car, and waive the owner’s deductible. Lugo advised accident victims that they should not call their insurance company until after they spoke to Moreno or Mejia.

Lugo also understood and agreed that Moreno and Mejia would create additional damage to certain vehicles in order to increase the vehicle insurance claims, thereby increasing the net profit for Majestic as well as covering both the cash bribe payment to Lugo and the payment of the vehicle owner’s deductible. When referring vehicles from accident scenes, Lugo often discussed with Moreno whether a particular vehicle needed more damage. Lugo also falsified his police reports on several occasions in order to make it appear that the damage added to a vehicle by Majestic had been caused by an accident so that the insurance company would not question the repairs. Moreno paid Lugo $200 in cash in exchange for falsifying a police report.

From at least October 2010 to February 2011, Moreno and Mejia paid Lugo $6,000 in cash for vehicles that he had referred to Majestic. Those payments, plus the cost of the additional damages that Moreno and others inflicted upon various accident vehicles in the form of insurance claims paid by the various insurance companies, caused a total loss of between $120,000 to $200,000.

Lugo faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for the conspiracy, and a maximum of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,0000 or twice the amount of the gross gain or loss for extortion. U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake has scheduled sentencing for July 10, 2012 at 9:00 a.m.

Hernan Alexis Moreno, age 30, of Rosedale; and Edwin Javier Mejia, age 27, of Middle River, pleaded guilty to the extortion conspiracy and face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Their sentencing has not yet been scheduled.

Fifteen Baltimore Police officers have pleaded guilty to their participation in the extortion scheme in federal court and one officer pleaded guilty in state court.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein praised the FBI and the Baltimore Police Department for their work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant United States Attorneys Tonya N. Kelly and Kathleen O. Gavin, who are prosecuting the case.

HIPAA-Compliant Document Management Solution Expands into Global Market

HIPAA-Compliant Document Management Solution Expands Into Global Market by Migrating to Windows Azure Cloud Platform

PaperTracer attracts international customers by migrating to Windows Azure to store, organize and safeguard its sensitive information in security-enhanced Microsoft global datacenters.

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REDMOND, Wash. — March 20, 2012 — PaperTracer, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based document-management service that assures compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, has moved to the Windows Azure cloud platform to deliver its services to customers worldwide. By backing its HIPAA compliance with the security features of Microsoft Corp. datacenters, PaperTracer expects to boost revenues by 30 percent in the first year alone. A subsidiary of Health Asset Management Inc. (HAMi), PaperTracer adopted cloud-computing technologies early on, delivering its Web-based solution as a service since its founding in 1999. For the past decade, PaperTracer has managed and maintained a server infrastructure that it hosted in a dedicated private cloud environment through a third-party provider in Florida. PaperTracer wanted to expand its business overseas but found that potential international customers viewed its single-location¸ U.S.-based infrastructure as a concern. “When customers are storing sensitive information such as patient data or intellectual property, they want to know that their data is stored locally,” said Michael Tarpley, CEO of HAMi. “Customers located outside the U.S. were not inclined to use PaperTracer.” The company resolved to move its services to a public cloud model, eventually narrowing the field to Windows Azure. “The decision to move to Windows Azure was an easy one,” said Keith Hoot, the company’s chief technology officer. “Not only does Microsoft offer security-enhanced global datacenters, but also its brand is recognized as synonymous with reliability.” Working with Microsoft partner Arth Systems, PaperTracer migrated to Windows Azure in April 2011. It hosts its application in Web roles in Windows Azure for background processing tasks and uses Microsoft SQL Azure for data storage. Using Windows Azure, the company packages its application and deploys it to the Microsoft datacenter nearest the customer’s location. PaperTracer recently created a variant that enables small and midsize businesses to take advantage of fast deployment on Windows Azure. Announced as 2EZData in November 2011, the solution is similar to PaperTracer and includes the same HIPAA-compliant features, such as activity-logging at the file level, role-based access controls, and forced password changes and logouts after periods of inactivity. By the end of 2011, the company had two customers in the U.S. and one in India using PaperTracer on Windows Azure. It also had 15 customers in the pipeline for 2EZData, many of which are located in India and other overseas locations. “If it weren’t for using Windows Azure, we would not have closed the deal with our PaperTracer customer in India,” said Rajashree Varma, the director of Global Alliance at HAMi. PaperTracer has traditionally provided customers the HIPAA-compliant features they require in a records management solution, but today it offers the service on a security-enhanced infrastructure that customers trust worldwide. With the previous infrastructure, it took a week or longer to procure the hardware and software required to get a customer up and running. On Windows Azure, PaperTracer can allocate compute and storage resources quickly, onboarding new customers in one or half a day. But Tarpley reiterated that trust is the key factor in connecting with international customers. “They see the Microsoft name, and they know that everything has been put in place to help safeguard their data,” he said. “That’s invaluable for our continued success.” More information on PaperTracer’s move to Windows Azure is available in the Microsoft case study and the Microsoft Customer Spotlight Newsroom. Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Enthusiastic About Car Sharing? Your Insurer Isn’t

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Enthusiastic About Car Sharing? Your Insurer Isn’t

By RON LIEBER

At first glance, the idea of person-to-person car sharing appears to be the perfect solution to any number of problems.  

People with idle cars (and most cars are idle most of the time) can make some money by renting them out to others who need a car sometimes but not often enough to own one. At some point, the world would ultimately need fewer cars and places to park them. It feels greener, and sharing is polite and all that.  

But then the grown-ups show up, in the form of insurance companies. I called them this week in the wake of an announcement by RelayRides, a company with venture capital backing from both Google Ventures and General Motors, that it was taking its car-sharing service national.

And the grown-ups are not pleased. They want you to know that RelayRides insurance won’t be adequate in the event of a catastrophic accident and that your own insurance company may take away your insurance if it even hears that you are lending your car to someone in exchange for a few dollars an hour.

So anyone considering this sort of thing has to ask: Is the insurance industry overstating the risk of playing along with this cutting-edge idea, is RelayRides underestimating your exposure, or both?

RelayRides is one of several car-sharing services to arrive on the scene in recent years. Getaround is another start-up, as are JustShareIt and Wheelz, a company that the car-sharing giant Zipcar invested in last month.

They’re all part of a larger “collaborative consumption” movement that has captured the imagination of a growing number of civic-minded, Web-addicted people who want to both save some money and use a bit less of the world’s resources. This includes home-sharing services like Airbnb, office-sharing services like Loosecubes and general sharing sites like NeighborGoods and Rentabilities. 

Greek Credit-Default Swaps Are Activated

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Greek Credit-Default Swaps Are Activated 

By PETER EAVIS

Greece's debt restructuring will prompt payouts on credit-default swaps tied to the country's government bonds.

The decision by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association ends months of speculation that a Greek default might not set off the swaps, a result that could have undermined their role as insurance against debt defaults.

"We saw today that the credit-default swap market worked," said the association's chief executive, Robert Pickel. "Market participants expected it to work."

Still, doubts about the instruments' effectiveness may linger. European officials initially shaped the Greek debt restructuring to avoid activating them. The concern is that future restructurings could be arranged to stop swaps from paying out.

"This is the right result, through a very circuitous path," said John Sprow, chief risk officer at Smith Breeden Associates, a fund management firm.

While Greece's debt exchange has been in the works for weeks, the restructuring activated the swaps only after the country made a legal move on Friday.

The Greek government chose to apply so-called collective action clauses, which it had earlier inserted into its bonds registered under Greek law. The deal maximized total debt relief for the country, but it also forced losses on bondholders - a credit event, and therefore a trigger, for the swaps.