RLI to deploy Guidewire solution for claims management

Illinois-based specialty insurance company RLI has selected Guidewire ClaimCenter as its new claims management system to support management of its 50 commercial and personal lines throughout US.

RLI Claims vice president Don Driscoll said that the company looked for a system that will increase both productivity and data acquisition, reduce internal and external costs, and position the RLI Claim Department for future business needs.HCL Technologies, Guidewire Services and Guidewire PartnerConnect affiliate member will work closely with RLI to help with the implementation of the project.ClaimCenter solution will enable RLI to enhance claim handling and workflow capabilities, provide better insight into financial and operational data, quickly respond to changing business and customer needs.The solution will also streamline the claims management process making claim data easier to capture and access and enhance management visibility into claim status and performance metrics.Guidewire ClaimCenter is an end-to-end claims management system designed to improve speed and accuracy, reduce loss adjustment expense, and enable proactive management of claims of today’s property/casualty insurers.ClaimCenter’s flexible business rules enable claims organisations to define, enforce, and continually refine their preferred claim handling practices in order to optimise and monitor their claim processes.

Can directors be personally liable for a company’s debts?

One of the great advantages of trading through a company is to take advantage of limited liability. This means that, unless you have personally guaranteed a liability – for example to a bank or landlord – then as a director you are not responsible for the company’s debts if it goes bust. However, an important exception to this principle known in legal jargon as “limited liability”  is that a director can be held personally responsible by a liquidator if he allowed the company to carry on trading after it became clear that it would go into liquidation. This is be

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First Edition: February 23, 2012

Today’s headlines include coverage of the health policy flashpoints during last night’s GOP presidential primary debate.  

Analysis: Is A New Federal Patient Safety Effort Doing Enough To Curb Medical Errors?
In the following analysis for Kaiser Health News, Michael L. Millenson writes: “The Medicare program is betting on a new course of action to curb what one medical journal has dubbed an ‘epidemic’ of uncontrolled patient harm. The effort is pegged to the success of a little-known entity called a ‘hospital engagement network’” (Millenson, 2/22).

Can Massachusetts Lead The Way On Controlling Health Costs?

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Car Insurance Community Rejects Consumer Group’s Conclusions

A new report released this week by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) says that premiums have become an undue economic burden on low- and moderate-income (LMI) Americans and that state regulators should do all they can to reduce costs for this group.

“What is undeniable is that high auto insurance costs for LMI households either impose a substantial financial burden or greatly limit economic opportunity, especially access to jobs,” said the report’s authors, who are a former Texas regulator and the executive director of insurance at the CFA.

The CFA report makes three major recommendations to help right the situation: move to slice state-mandated minimum liability limits, create special programs for low-income Americans to get cheaper coverage and eliminate elements of the pricing process that hurt LMI households.

But members of the auto insurance community have been lashing out in response to the report, saying that placing more regulation on insurers would decrease competition in the marketplace, which could in turn actually end driving costs up for consumers.

“The most effective way to lower the price of auto insurance is reduce the costs of underlying factors” like the cost of health care and abuse of the system, said Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute (III). “Changing

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Raymond James wins breach of covenants case

Lawyer says case is important “from a wider legal perspective”

Financial services firm Raymond James has won a legal battle over breach of restrictive covenants in the High Court.

A lawyer acting for the defendants said the case was important for all breach of covenant cases.

Financial advisers Towry sued Raymond James for breach of covenants, misuse of information and alleged conspiracy to induce breach of contract in 2009 after seven staff left Edward Jones, a Towry acquisition, to join Raymond James.

Towry claimed that the seven staff had breached their covenants by soliciting Edward Jones clients to join Raymond James.

Law firm Faegre Baker Daniels, acting for Raymond James, argued that the clients had chosen to move and that covenants had not been broken because there was no restriction on ‘dealing’ with clients in the Edward Jones contracts.

Justice Cox ruled this week that the defendants were innocent of all charges and awarded costs to them.

Faegre Baker Daniels employment partner Alex Denny said: “This is a fantastic and well-deserved result for Raymond James and the advisors and an important decision from a wider legal perspective. 

“It highlights the importance of knowing what post-termination restrictions apply to potential new recruits and taking time to ensure that they are not breached. The fact that Raymond James and the advisors had consistently taken and followed legal advice was described by the judge as being a ‘striking feature’ of the case and a major factor in the claims being dismissed in their entirety.”

 

 

Clerity, Veryant selected to modernize Interamerican central insurance IT system

Interamerican has selected Clerity’s UniKix Mainframe Rehosting software and Veryant vCOBOL Enterprise to modernize its central insurance IT system.

The Greek insurer selected Clerity’s UniKix Batch Processing Environment (BPE) and Veryant’s vCOBOL software to move all legacy COBOL-based batch applications from IBM z/OS on the mainframe to Linux on IBM System z.

Interamerican is redeveloping its online IBM CICS workloads on the mainframe as Java Web-based applications, using UniKix to address batch/JCL requirements, and vCOBOL to support migrated COBOL programs in a similar way to the z/OS environment, until everything will be redeveloped in Java.

The company will be deploying UniKix BPE and vCOBOL on mainframe Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processors in production, including more than two terabytes of sequential, VSAM and IBM DB2 data.

Interamerican CTO Nikos Katsaros said since the firm wanted to focus mostly on the redevelopment plans and the move to an open computing environment was for a platform that would help insurer achieve strategic goals with the least disruption of existing everyday processes.The project is expected to begin by end-February 2012.