September 2009

Global Reinsurance Forum: What’s Their Agenda?

Published by Craig Robinson on

Craig Robinson Reinsurance Sales Engineer StoneRiver At the recent Rendez-Vous Conference in Monte Carlo, where insurance and reinsurance executives meet annually, 11 large global reinsurers created the Global Reinsurance Forum (GRF). The GRF was created to "promote a stable, innovative and competitive reinsurance market." The 11 founding members of the new GRF are: Gen Re, Hannover Re, Lloyd's, Munich Re, Partner Re, RGA, SCOR, Swiss Re, Toa Re, Transatlantic Re and XL Capital. Read more>>

The 2009 StoneRiver Summit - Review

Published by StoneRiver on

For quick reference, here a rundown of the StoneRiver blog posts over the past 5 days.

Nancy Friedman, The Telephone Doctor, discussed customer services in Hell Hath No Fury Like A Customer Scorned at the day one keynote.

We took a look at Chad Hersh, principal in the insurance practice at Novarica as he discussed Online Customer Service Trends at Top U.S. Life/Annuity Insurers.

Smarter Insurance: Surviving and Thriving in Uncertain Times was the day two keynote by Jaime Bisker of IBM Global Business Services, Institute for Business Value.

Lori Soppe of StoneRiver presented the 2009 Excel Award winners.

Clients Honored with Excel Awards at StoneRiver Annual Client Conference

Published by Lori Soppe on

StoneRiver announced the recipients of the Excel Awards Tuesday, September 22, during their annual client conference, being held this week at Lowe’s Portofino Bay Hotel in Orlando, Florida. Nine clients were honored for their accomplishments with awards in five categories.

It is the second year for the program which recognizes StoneRiver clients for their unique innovation and leadership. Last year, eight clients were presented Excel awards at the program’s debut. Those clients were once again recognized by the nearly 400 conference attendees during the Tuesday evening dinner event.

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Smarter Insurance

Published by Sean Roper on

“For the insurance industry, the greatest natural resource is information.” That was one of the core messages of Smarter Insurance: Surviving and Thriving in Uncertain Times, the keynote presentation this morning by Jaime Bisker of IBM Global Business Services, Institute for Business Value.

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Online Sales Service is Not Going Away

Published by Sean Roper on

“Online Sales Service is Not Going Away.” Those were the words of advice early on from Chad Hersh, principal in the insurance practice at Novarica in his session Online Customer Service Trends at Top U.S. Life/Annuity Insurers.

For the past five years, Chad has been the primary researcher and author of the market leading reports on insurance core systems, and is a widely recognized expert on the topic who has presented at numerous conferences and conducted numerous vendor selection projects for US and international insurers.

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Hard Facts on the Soft Market: Risk Management and Insurance

Published by Julie Mendel on


Julie Mendel
Senior Vice President of Education Services
StoneRiver - RegEd

There are two categories of insurance markets in the industry’s cycle. These are the hard market and the soft market. The hard market is generally characterized by high or increasing rates, coverage restrictions and lower limits; a smaller appetite for insurance carriers. The soft market can be characterized by low or falling rates, the availability of higher limits and more flexible contracts; a bigger appetite by insurance carriers.

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Customer Retention in a Tough Economy: Part Three of Three

Published by Frank Heaps on

Frank Heaps
Director, P&C Product Marketing
StoneRiver

This is a continuation of our three-part look at ways to retain your customers and attract new customers through innovation. Part one was about policy processing and ways to help attract new customers. Part two examined billing and ways to provide innovative service in electronic form. In this part we look at how to excel in the eyes of your customers and prove the value of being a customer of your company. Claims are the single most important touch point and the place where you show your value as an insurance company. I specialize in the claims domain and often refer to claims as the reason we have insurance to begin with: things get damaged or people are injured and therefore you need to replace, fix, or heal.

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