A.M. Best Announces E-Fusion Recipients.

OLDWICK, N.J. -- A.M. Best Co. has named Grange Insurance, Securian Financial Group, Church Mutual Insurance Co., Penn National Insurance, SalvageSale Inc. and Western & Southern Financial Group recipients of the 2005 E-Fusion awards.

The awards, covering six categories of technology development, were presented at A.M. Best's Insurance and Technology Conference, E-Fusion 2005, in Philadelphia Oct. 18. The awards recognize innovative, business-focused uses of technology in actual use by insurers. The emphasis was on the business reasoning that gave birth to each project and results that were generated.

"The scope, caliber and competitive excellence of this year's E-Fusion award presentations reflect the deep commitment that the insurance industry is giving to the use of technology to leverage business value. Voting was extremely close in each category and all finalists should be commended for their outstanding achievements in their respective organizations," said Paul Tinnirello, A.M. Best executive vice president, chief information officer and conference chairman.

The award-receiving projects and their respective categories are as follows:

Agent/Broker Management: Grange Insurance of Columbus, Ohio, developed GrangeAgent.com--an independent insurance agency extranet portal to an integrated platform, designed to enhance agent work flow and streamline business. The system supports Grange AgentWare, enabling agents to electronically manage their book of business. Opt-in usage of the site has been 100%, and more than 92% of all new business and 94% of all policy changes are being entered into the new system. Grange offers a wide variety of insurance products including auto, home, business, life and other financial products.

Claims Management: Church Mutual Insurance Co., based in Wisconsin, created the claims electronic file, appropriately titled eFile. Its eFile system has a number of features useful to claims staff, including immediate simultaneous electronic access to file claim documents, the ability to find those claims over the LAN, WAN and the Web, and the automatic handling of incoming and outgoing e-mails, their attachments and faxes with agents, adjusters and customers. One of the chief benefits to the eFile system is the elimination of large amounts of storage that were necessary to house the tremendous amount of paper claims used to generate. Church Mutual said eFile has significantly improved efficiency and accuracy in serving their customers, and increased productivity overall.

Customer Management: Securian Financial Group's ClientConnect is a full-service contact management system for the Securian Financial Network distribution channel. The base system includes contact management, seminar tracking, opportunity management, call tracking and client reporting. The system also supports full tracking of life insurance, disability income, long-term care, medical, homeowner, and umbrella policies. The system's goals include acting on cross-selling opportunities; establishing and tracking marketing campaigns; organizing and running seminars; and providing consolidated client holding reports. Launched early in 2004, ClientConnect has proven successful in three ways: retention and recruitment, product-line sales results, and site usage.

Productivity Management: Mobile computing is offering Penn National Insurance dynamic loss control services that help with its strategy to grow its small-business and middle-market business portfolio. The project provides technology to liberate staff from administrative burdens and frees them to fulfill their consulting mission. The project uses tablet PCs, store-and-forward technology, wireless connectivity, handwriting conversion recognition, digital-optics capture and free-form sketches. The system completely automates a totally manual process allowing for improved work flow efficiencies in the field, which will increase productivity and allow field representatives to stay in the field longer.

Special Coverage Management: SalvageSale Inc., which specializes in helping businesses recover from insurance losses and catastrophes, has built an online auction site, www.salvagesale.com., to connect businesses with damaged goods--such as boats, retail goods, and heavy equipment--to potential buyers. SalvageSale, based in Houston, estimates that just 10% of commercial insurance salvaged materials make it to the open market. By expanding the market and number of potential buyers, SalvageSale has raised salvage proceeds by 50% to 100%, which ultimately reduces insurance claims and losses.

Underwriting and Pricing: When Western & Southern Financial Group wanted to speed its life underwriting, it partnered with NaviSys to develop a J2EE-based system, iNB, that it says has transformed its business. The system has improved the Cincinnati-based financial group's producer/customer service, underwriting results, operating efficiency and revenue. iNB enables a paperless process and automation of routine underwriting decisions, resulting in a jet issue rate of 25% of issued policies. It also has empowered the group to process more business without adding more staff resources. Internal system users include call center personnel, processors/back office staff, and licensing and marketing personnel.

Judges for the 2005 awards competition were Denise A. Holzka, a partner with Heidell, Pittoni, Murphy & Bach LLP; Thomas A. Meyers, senior vice president and chief financial officer, New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Co.; John Pogas, vice president, Internet & E-Commerce, Affinity Insurance Services division of Aon Corp.; John Ryan, senior vice president, Marketing and Strategy, ESIS Inc. division of AceUSA; Patricia L. Saporito, Insurance Industry Practice manager, Information Builders; and Craig Weber, senior analyst, Celent LLC.

A.M. Best Co., established in 1899, is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit A.M. Best's Web site at www.ambest.com.