Oracle Corporation: Oracle Insurance Marks Year-One Achievements at Oracle(R) OpenWorld

One year after its launch at Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco 2008, Oracle Insurance today commemorated key achievements of its inaugural year during a keynote presentation for insurance industry executives.
First-year milestones include significant product upgrades and integrations that deliver on the Oracle Insurance promise to help insurers gain new levels of agility in unpredictable business environments.
In a general session on the topic of identifying and removing business constraints, Oracle Insurance highlighted ways in which its solutions are helping more than 2,000 insurance customers worldwide to deliver products to market faster, reduce operational costs, strengthen customer and distributor relationships, and gain full visibility into their business operations.
Customer successes during the past year include:

[ Penn National Insurance ], a Pennsylvania-based personal and commercial property-casualty insurance company with a network of approximately 700 independent agencies, consolidated onto a single rating engine with [ Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting ] to streamline its rating process. Penn National integrated the Oracle solution with its Web-based agency portal and legacy, mainframe-based policy administration platform to help ensure quote accuracy. Since deploying Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting, Penn National has nearly doubled new business quotes from independent agents compared to the previous year, with agents favorably comparing the system to those of much larger national carriers.
[ Insurance House ], a leading regional managing general agency (MGA) and wholesale broker, is using Oracle Insurance solutions, including [ Oracle Insurance Data Capture ], Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting and [ Oracle Documaker ] to support expansion into a new geographic market by enabling straight-through processing for the rate-quote-bind cycle. The new Oracle-based system, known as IH Express™, enables agents to quickly request a quote from Insurance House; submit an application; select a payment plan; bind a policy; create the necessary documentation and accept initial payment -- all from a single portal.
[ Securian Financial Group ]'s life insurance subsidiary, Minnesota Life, is using Oracle Insurance Illustration and [ Oracle Insurance Policy Administration ] to reduce the time required to introduce new products to market and quickly execute changes to existing product lines. Securian received a 2009 ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) Achievement Award for its use of ACORD messaging standards in conjunction with its Oracle Insurance implementation. In the two-and-a-half years since deploying the Oracle solution, Securian has issued 20 new release items, including Index Universal Life, Term, Variable Universal Life, Whole Life and Fixed Survivor, among others.
[ CAMICO Mutual Insurance Company ], the largest certified public accountant (CPA)-owned mutual insurance company in the United States, is using Oracle Fusion Middleware Solutions for Insurance, including [ Oracle WebCenter Suite ], and [ Oracle Business Process Management ] to help increase the volume and depth of information available to its customers and improve underwriting efficiency. Within six months of deploying the Oracle-based solution, CAMICO received half of its direct application and renewal submissions via its online channel and increased the total number of submissions received across all channels of communication. CAMICO also has used Oracle Business Process Management to automate transaction processing, enabling the company to fine-tune underwriting logic and increase the number of users who can complete transactions online.

Oracle Insurance continues to deliver on its vision of an end-to-end software offering that manages the entire enterprise -- from technical infrastructure to core insurance processing. Product news over the past year included:

[ Oracle Insurance Policy Administration 9.0 ], the latest release of Oracle's next-generation, rules-based policy administration system for Life and Annuities. The latest release includes support for multiple languages and currencies within a single instance of the system. This support enables global insurers to roll out one policy administration system in multiple countries, and gives regional insurers the ability to conduct business in virtually any combination of languages and currencies. A completely rules-driven system, Oracle Insurance Policy Administration allows insurers to quickly configure new products and bring them to market without the traditional, time-consuming process of changing the system's underlying code.
[ Oracle Insurance Insight 6.0 ] is an insurance-specific data warehouse that leverages [ Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition ] for dashboards and analytics. Oracle Insurance Insight contains a transactional data warehouse model as well as line-specific data mart structures, making it one of the most comprehensive business intelligence solutions for insurers on the market. The pre-built analytics in this release let insurers perform cross-functional relationship reporting -- such as combined policy and claims data analysis -- for a complete, warehouse-to-analytics, insurance-specific business intelligence solution.
[ Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack for Insurance ], which helps insurers to unify their Oracle and non-Oracle application portfolio, including new and existing systems; minimize integration costs and risks; and quickly adapt business processes. The first pre-built integration in Oracle AIA for Insurance -- Oracle's Siebel Claims and [ Oracle's financial solutions (PeopleSoft Enterprise ] and [ Oracle E-Business Suite) Financials ] -- helps insurers streamline claims payments and reserve management.
[ Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance ], introduced in June, provides insurers the robust billing capabilities necessary to deliver streamlined, convenient billing, payment and collections processes, with comprehensive and consolidated billing management capabilities to improve customer service.

Supporting Quotes

"Insurance companies today are looking to technology solutions to provide the tools they need to deal effectively with constantly, and sometimes rapidly, changing business drivers and market conditions," said Parthasarathy "Partha" Srinivasa, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Applications Development, Farmers Insurance Group. "Oracle Insurance provides the insurance industry with the capabilities to support this dynamic transformation. They are delivering adaptive applications that enable immediate information access, provide a stable foundation built on an open architecture, and ensure process flexibility."
"During the past year, insurers have been challenged like never before to successfully navigate their businesses through rapid and monumental market changes," said Rick Connors, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle's Insurance Global Business Unit. "Oracle Insurance understands the industry's new business requirements, including a need for unsurpassed agility. They are also making important strides in executing on their commitment to deliver industry-leading applications that help companies, like Farmers, modernize legacy enterprise systems. This gives them the flexibility to let business users make the changes they need to make, to continue to compete profitably."
"To support continued growth across our U.S. business process outsourcing segment, we require a strategic technology partner with proven success in the insurance industry. Oracle Insurance Policy Administration provides us with a robust solution that will help us improve offerings to our customers. It also will give us increased agility to respond to changing market demands and swiftly capitalize on opportunities for strategic growth in our BPO sector," said Rob McGinnis, Chief Executive Officer, Marsh U.S. Consumer.
"Oracle Documaker provides robust publishing and communication capabilities, which has allowed us to consolidate document production onto a single, stable platform. We're using Documaker for batch printing and also to produce real-time, dynamic documents that our agents love. Now we have a product that's stable, that works, and that has those marketing bells and whistles that we all like," said Harold Waibel, team technical lead, American Modern Insurance.
"Deploying Oracle Insurance Data Capture along with Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting has positioned us to accelerate entry into new markets. We can now quickly build rates or make changes to existing rates to facilitate continued business growth and enhanced operational efficiency," said Wayne Burney, director, Strategic Business Services, Insurance House.

Supporting Resources

Oracle Innovation Showcase
For more than 32 years, Oracle has been a technology innovator, transforming the way business is conducted. To learn about Oracle's latest technologies and history of innovation, visit the [ Innovation Showcase ] at [ oracle.com/innovation ]. And during Oracle OpenWorld (October 11-15), you can hear and interact with innovators from Oracle and its partners at [ oracle.com/openworld ].

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Oracle Corporation: Oracle Insurance Marks Year-One Achievements at Oracle(R) OpenWorld