|
Cybertalk Archives:
Pick a year to skip to that
year,
or scroll down for the complete list:
2002 2001 2000
1999 1998
February 1998 and Prior
CyberTalk for 2002
February/March 2002
CyberTalk Ceases Publication.
The CyberTalk column, which has appeared
in Resource magazine since 1995, ceased publication with the January 2002
issue of Resource. In this month's column, Jean Gora comments about why she decided to stop writing
CyberTalk.
January
2002
HartfordInvestor.com Offers
Competitive Advantage. The Internet continues to increase in importance
as a vehicle for communication between insurers and their distributors. No site
demonstrates that fact better than The Hartford’s new broker-oriented site,
HartfordInvestor.com, which distributes annuities, individual life insurance,
mutual funds, and qualified plans.
CyberTalk for 2001
December
2001
Airing Dirty Laundry. The Internet now allows employees, agents, and other insiders to tell the
world what is going on within a company after a merger. Read the comments on the
Yahoo Finance message board (through http://finance.yahoo.com) for any large
recently merged insurance company. For the first time company insiders have a
relatively easy way to bring management errors to the attention of investors and
the general public. This CyberTalk column examines comments on the Yahoo Finance
message board about one recent insurance merger.
November 2001
Insurers’ Internet Banking Features.
This month’s CyberTalk offers a comparison of the Internet banking
features of the top insurers with federal thrift powers. It reveals a variety of
different insurer approaches to offering banking services, particularly checking
and other closely related services.
October
2001
The World Trade Center Tragedy. Major global insurance and financial services companies
experienced the World Trade Center disaster directly because of their offices
there. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, many of these same firms
used the Internet to communicate with employees and customers regarding the
disaster. This article identifies the affected companies and examines some
of their Internet communications over the days immediately after the events took
place.
September 2001
Insurers’ Bank Activity. This
CyberTalk examines
what U.S. insurance companies are doing on the Internet in the area of banking.
The activities of insurers in the area of banking depend on the powers bank regulatory authorities permit them. This month’s article discusses what these powers are.
August 2001
Who Merges and Why—or Why Not? Despite the apparent increasing consolidation and
globalization of the financial industry, the vast majority of financial mergers
during the 1990s were domestic and took place within various sectors of the
industry, not across them (i.e. a lot more banks bought other banks than bought
insurers). Several interesting
studies have become available recently that shed light on financial industry
consolidation. This issue of CyberTalk examines their findings.
July 2001
Blurring Boundaries: Data
Processors and Insurance Distribution. Services provided by
data processing
companies allow the creation of virtual banks and insurance companies, enable
firms in one sector of the financial industry to enter other sectors with
relative ease, and allow small banks and insurers to match the service offerings
of large banks and insurers. In some cases, these firms actually become licensed
players in the financial industry.This month’s CyberTalk examines two such
companies, Fiserv and Bisys, both of which started out as providers of data
processing services for banks.
June 2001
Bank Insurance: Is it Big Yet? As part of an effort to discover how far banks
have penetrated into the U.S. insurance business, CyberTalk occasionally
examines what various Internet sites reveal on that subject. This month,
CyberTalk examines insurance brokers with bank-owned parents as listed in Business
Insurance in July 2000 and compares the U.S. brokerage revenue listed there
with the insurance revenue listed by their bank parents in their SEC Form 10k
filings covering the year 2000.
May 2001
Integrating Insurance into Online Banking. Seventeen of the 20 largest U.S. banks and
thrifts offer home banking on the Internet, and the same banks also offer
insurance on the Internet. (One bank that does not offer Internet home banking
does offer annuities.) This issue of CyberTalk reviews the demos of their Internet home
banking services.
April 2001
"e-Nable"-ing Automated Underwriting.
As banks and
other intermediaries play an increasing role in life insurance distribution, the
pressure on the life insurance industry to speed up underwriting grows. Thus,
the Internet-based automated underwriting services of e-Nable.com Corporation, a
subsidiary of the Medical Information Bureau, are of particular interest.
March 2001
Search Engines.
This month's CyberTalk explores one small aspect of
the challenges employees can encounter using search engines—examining whether it is possible for an employee to find useful, targeted
information easily by running Internet
searches. CyberTalk visited 34 leading
Internet search sites and ran the same search through each of them. The table in
this column shows the first five search results obtained from each site.
February 2001
The Money Suite Company Moves
VUL Online. This month's CyberTalk
examines The Money Suite
Company, a company that has created a variable universal life insurance product for sale via the
Web. And not only that—it has also created a Web site through which the
product can be sold, plus it offers back-end fulfillment, customer service, and
reinsurance (the latter available through a reinsurance partner). The Money Suite Company offers this turnkey
service, marketed under the name realTIME>life™.
January 2001
Automated Investment Advice: Who
Wants It?
Large insurers in the 401(k) market are
increasingly adding automated participant investment advice features to their
Internet offerings. An examination of some of the Web sites of the leading
providers of automated investment advice services turned up numerous
announcements of relationships with insurance companies and other plan
providers. This month’s CyberTalk examines these services and indicates which
insurers and financial institutions use them.
CyberTalk for 2000
December 2000
A Look at an Evolving eBenX. This month, CyberTalk examines eBenX, a
Minneapolis-based company that provides Internet-based and other group health
benefits procurement and administrative services. Its story shows how a company
that started out providing services linking employers and managed care plans is
playing an increasing role in the distribution of health plans to employers. It
is doing so by developing both B2B e-commerce capabilities and forming alliances
with brokers (and in some cases acting very much like a broker itself).
November 2000
New York Life: A Clear,
Consistent Vision. Every so often, it is valuable to revisit the
Internet sites of major U.S. life insurers to see if the Internet has wrought
any major changes in business models. This month, CyberTalk looks at the site of
New York Life, ranked by A.M. Best as the eighth largest U.S. life insurer in
1999 in terms of life insurance in force.
October
2000
Ebix.com: Facing Considerable
Challenges. In November 1999, CyberTalk reported on the
Internet auction phenomenon, with a particular emphasis on Ebix.com, an
insurance auction site that began operation in September 1999. Since that time,
Ebix.com has won much favorable comment in the press. It
also has established numerous alliances with other Internet sites and persuaded
a host of established insurance companies to quote prices on the site.
Unfortunately, however, it has also failed to attract a large number of
insurance applicants, suffered grave financial problems, and faced SEC
challenges to some of its accounting practices. This issue of CyberTalk explores
the multiple dimensions of Ebix.com’s experience over the past year.
September 2000
High-Tech Insurance Brokerage:
A Certain Place in an Uncertain Future. Because
activities of insurance brokerage high-tech companies span both the insurance
and high-tech industries, it is difficult to find information that profiles them
accurately. This month’s CyberTalk fills part of the vacuum by describing one
such company and examining economic issues associated with various types of
Internet insurance markets.
August 2000
Customer Information
Aggregators. As legislators, regulators, and lobbyists debate
consumer privacy protection on the Internet, Internet entrepreneurs continue to
develop new systems and services that aggregate consumer financial information
and other personal data in a single location. Several new approaches to
aggregation are attracting significant attention at present. This month’s
CyberTalk examines these activities and insurance company involvement in them.
July 2000
European Insurance Multinationals
Expand Internet Activities. Insurance
conglomerates typically publish annual reports in the spring. This year, the
annual reports of several European conglomerates with large U.S. operations are
particularly interesting. They provide new information about the groups’
Internet strategies. In some cases, they disclose statistics on their Internet
sales volume. The groups are Zurich, ING, AXA, Prudential U.K., Fortis, and
Skandia.
June 2000
Still Unprofitable After All These
Years. Every so often, factual
information regarding the success of Internet insurance distribution activities
becomes available. This information is buried in annual reports and filings with
the Securities and Exchange Commission. This month’s CyberTalk examines
information regarding InsureMarket and InsWeb. It shows that despite impressive
gains in traffic, these sites do not operate profitably at present.
May
2000
Senior Executives
Discuss Their E-Commerce Plans. At
the end of 1999, LOMA and Andersen Consulting conducted a joint survey of senior
insurance executives around the world regarding their activities and plans for
electronic commerce. A report based on that survey is available for sale through
LOMA. Here are some of the highlights of the report, which was based on 213
respondents—60 percent from the U.S. and Canada, 23 percent from Australasia,
9 percent from Europe, and 8 percent from other countries in the Americas.
April 2000
Reconfiguring Healthcare Management—Online. Anyone
who wants to see how the U.S.healthcare management system is likely to be
reconfigured yet again should take a look at Healtheon/WebMD. This month's
CyberTalk examines the firm's strategy. It looks first at Healtheon's business
and leading customers before the WebMD merger and before many of the alliances
had the chance to bear fruit. Then it looks at the direction established by the
merger with WebMD, as indicated by the new integrated Web site, www.webmd.com.
Finally it examines the wide range of alliance and acquisition partners
announced by the firm in recent months.
March
2000
Reinsurers Establish Internet Exchanges. One of the big problems
insurers face in doing business with reinsurers is the volume of paper files
that must be submitted with each application. In late 1999, two reinsurers —
CNA Life Re and Swiss Re — introduced Internet-based services designed to
improve the efficiency of the submission process. Although both companies aim to
link multiple direct insurers to reinsurers, they take very different approaches
to the problem. This month's CyberTalk examines the solutions they propose.
February
2000
Altering the Economics of Distribution. There will be
significant growth in Internet insurance distribution in the year 2000 for two
reasons. One is that laws governing electronic contracts and signatures will be
in place at both the federal and state levels. The other is because more and
more insurers are shifting resources away from their agency distribution systems
in order to invest in Internet distribution. Last month, CyberTalk examined the
first reason. This month, it examines the second—and also shows how agency
distribution is being restructured to cope with this change.
January
2000
A Robust Legal Infrastructure for Insurance E-Commerce. The year 2000
is likely to be the year when insurance distribution on the Internet achieves
significant growth. There are several important reasons for this. The first and
most important is that laws governing electronic contracts and signatures will
be in place at both the federal and state levels. The second is that more and
more insurers are shifting resources away from their agency distribution systems
in order to invest in Internet distribution. This month’s CyberTalk examines
the first of these reasons.
CyberTalk for
1999
December
1999
Going, Going, Gone: Insurance on the Auction Block. Auctions are
proliferating on the Internet, and they are invading areas of commerce that have
not traditionally held auctions. To what degree is the auction model relevant to
insurance distribution on the Internet? This month’s CyberTalk examines this
issue. It focuses particular attention on the new online insurance mall,
Ebix.com, which comes closer than other insurance malls to the auction model.
November
1999
Web-Enabling MGA Services. Until recently, insurance carriers
were not under great pressure to compete regarding the quality of their
electronic service delivery. This is about to change as some leading-edge
organizations develop MGA-oriented Web-based services. This issue of CyberTalk
describes one such service, the Fieldlink extranet developed by Royal &
SunAlliance Financial, the Canadian subsidiary of British insurance group Royal
& SunAlliance (RSA).
October
1999
Expanding Online Distribution: Partnerships and Call Centers. CyberTalk
recently spoke to Diana Scott, vice president of electronic commerce and
direct distribution at John Hancock, Boston, MA, and Dan Flahive, vice president
of marketing and business integration, The Midland Life, Columbus, OH. Both
companies distribute their products through a variety of Internet channels. One
such channel is InsWeb, a leading Internet insurance mall, which recently added
a call center to its online operations.
September
1999
Intranet-Based Knowledge Management at Clarica. This month’s
CyberTalk examines the knowledge management system of Clarica, formerly The
Mutual Group. This system not only makes extensive use of Clarica’s corporate
intranet; it also shows how the education of insurance company employees is
beginning to change. Since its 1998 acquisition of MetLife’s Canadian
subsidiary, Clarica has been the fourth largest Canadian insurer. Clarica was
the first Canadian company to adopt the level commission system and has used it
since 1989.
August
1999
E-Commerce Regulation Meets the NAIC. Insurance regulations have been a
major barrier to the use of the Internet for insurance electronic commerce. To
remedy the situation, the Electronic Commerce and Regulation Working Group of
the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) recently published a
"working draft" of recommendations regarding desirable changes in
state insurance laws. This document is available in its entirety at the NAIC’s
Internet site. This month's Cybertalk includes highlights.
July
1999
Extending Relationships: CUNA Mutual and Credit Unions Online. Despite
the consolidation of the financial industry and the introduction of
sophisticated electronic services by large institutions, small financial
institutions have a future. The relationship between CUNA Mutual and U.S. credit
unions suggests why. This month’s CyberTalk examines that relationship and
shows how the insurance products and Internet services offered by CUNA Mutual
can help even small credit unions to remain viable.
June
1999
Executing Core Processes on the Internet. More and more Internet sites
allow the execution of core insurance processes. This month’s CyberTalk
reviews several of the most interesting. One—ChannelPoint—is an employee
benefits Internet mall that not only allows distribution; it also allows product
design and pricing. The other — Cyber$ettle — allows online negotiation and
settlement of disputed claims. Travelers Insurance, one of the insurance
companies that uses Cyber$ettle, also allows claim filing through its own Web
site.
May
1999
A Lack of Presentment. An examination of the Internet sites of the 20
leading U.S. life insurance companies shows that not a single one of the sites
offers electronic bill presentment. Electronic bill presentment delivers a
customer’s bill to the customer over the Internet and allows the customer to
initiate payment over the Internet. One reason may be that the tools for
electronic bill presentment are only now beginning to reach the market. Another
reason may be that some companies are unfamiliar with the issues involved. The
May CyberTalk looks at the issues involved in setting up billing via the
Internet.
April
1999
Life Companies Expand Online Service Functions. Use of
the Internet by insurance companies to provide customer service has increased
over the past year. This column has previously noted the widespread use of the
Internet in conjunction with corporate pension plans, 401(k) plans in
particular. Now, a number of life insurers have also begun to offer serious life
insurance customer service functions on the Internet, and two are even allowing
online filing of death claims -- Northwestern Mutual Life (NML) and MONY. This
month’s CyberTalk examines the customer service sections of the sites of these
two life insurers.
March
1999
Express Yourself: Met’s Online Forum. MetLife, which has long had one
of the most elaborate life insurance company Internet sites, has recently added
an online forum to its site. This issue of CyberTalk examines how the MetLife
online forum is structured.
February
1999
HMO, PPO, WWW: Managed Care Meets the Internet. Aetna U.S.
Healthcare (AUSHC) and Kaiser Permanente have both made a massive commitment to
the Internet. Their activities show how important the Internet has become for
the managed care industry. The approaches of the two organizations differ, but
each offers valuable lessons for other managed care providers. This column
describes in detail the strategies of each.
January
1999
Internet Investment Advisors Target 401(k) Plan Sponsors. At the end of
the third quarter of 1998, millions of individuals covered by 401(k) plans in
the U.S. received not-so-good news about the impact of the stock market's
decline on their retirement savings. Those who monitored their plans'
performance on the Internet or via automated voice response systems received the
news somewhat earlier. Irrespective of when they received the news, these people
learned that their retirement savings could decline as well as increase. In a
country where the savings rate is as low as it is in the U.S., this situation is
a cause of concern. This column discusses the complexities of this problem.
CyberTalk for 1998
December
1998
Online Annuity Offerings and the Emergence of Portals Further Change Insurance
E-Commerce. For a long time, many people in the insurance industry have
talked about the impossibility of selling complex products directly. They hold
the view that only an agent can guide a prospect through the intricacies of a
product as complex a variable annuity or variable life insurance. They also
believe that the only way to close a sale is by discussing needs rather than
product specifics. This month's Cybertalk examines the whether these theories
hold up in light of what's actually going on.
November
1998
Direct to the Consumer. Slowly but surely, more insurance companies are
beginning to use the Internet to offer online price quotations, applications,
and credit card payments of initial premiums. These findings are the results of
a survey conducted by LOMA of 41 North American member companies that
participate in LOMA's systems committees. These members include many of the top
25 U.S. and top five Canadian companies as well as assorted smaller carriers.
This month's CyberTalk looks at the survey results.
October
1998
All the Right Friends: Alliances Pay Off for InsWeb. Interesting things
have been happening on InsWeb, one of the two leading Internet insurance malls.
Traffic on the site has increased dramatically—proof that its alliance
strategy is paying off. InsWeb continues to announce new alliances. In addition,
it has attracted increased involvement by leading insurers, including CNA and
State Farm. This month’s CyberTalk examines the different strategic alliances
that are helping make InsWeb successful. Additionally, Robert Hamilton of CNA
reports on his company's InsWeb activity in this column, and selected other CNA
activities on the Internet are profiled.
September
1998
Tech and the Euro: Revamping the Securities Industry. The securities
industry is presently undergoing an immense change triggered by technology. The
move to a single currency by the countries in the European Union is providing an
additional impetus. Together these changes are causing a reconfiguration of much
of the securities industry. This month's column explores how the convergence of
these trends is affecting the way we do business.
August
1998
Why and Wherefore: Direct Sales on the Internet. Providing an online
price quotation for term life insurance represents a possible first step toward
a direct sale. Nine months ago, only two of the top 20 U.S. insurers were
willing to take such a visible first step in any product line. The remainder
offered agent locators. Now four of the top 20 insurers are willing to take that
step with regard to term life insurance. They are Prudential, CNA, Nationwide
and John Hancock.
July 1998
Bancassurance, Automated Underwriting and the Web. Today,
the Web browser is a tremendously important front end to insurance applications.
So much so, in fact, that browsers can now support distribution through a
multiplicity of channels. They are no longer limited to direct distribution to
end customers through the public Internet. This month's column describes how
Internets, intranets and extranets are being used to cut distribution costs.
June 1998
Net Met: It Pays! Two months ago, CyberTalk examined how
Prudential’s Internet site has evolved over the last several years. In the
same span of time, MetLife’s site has also evolved. This month’s column
examines the current MetLife site, shows how it has evolved, and compares
MetLife’s approach to Web site development with that of Prudential.
May 1998
Evidence is beginning to appear that the Internet is a successful
insurance distribution channel. Several insurance company sources with
significant Web activities have told the author that Internet activities
generate both higher close ratios and higher-face-amount policies than
traditional sales activities do. This generalization applies both to direct
Internet sales and to sales generated by Internet agent referrals. Although
current volume is low, it is growing. These sources attribute their success to
several factors.
April 1998
Many insurance companies that have made a strong commitment to the
Internet update their Web sites annually or every 18 months. These updates allow
the companies to take advantage of evolving Internet browser features and
development tools. They also provide outsiders with useful indications of the
companies’ Internet strategies. This month’s CyberTalk examines how
Prudential’s Web site has evolved over the past year.
March 1998
1998 may be the year when the insurance industry really begins to sell
insurance on the Internet—instead of using it for promotion or to generate
agent referrals. One reason may be the evolving Secure Electronic Transaction or
SET protocol, which provides an increased level of security to the
transmission of credit card numbers via the Internet. Use of the Internet to
sell insurance is likely to depend on such transmissions for payment of initial
premiums. This issue of CyberTalk reports on the results of a confidential LOMA
mini-survey of nine North American insurers (of varying sizes) regarding current
Internet activity and planned usage of SET. It also describes SET and how it
builds on the existing credit card authorization and settlement systems.
******************
CyberTalk
for February 1998 and Prior
CyberTalk columns that
appeared in Resource issues from December 1995 through February 1998 are
described below. To receive the full article, send your request to LOMA's
Information Center, infoctr@loma.org.
February 1998
Bank Activity on the Net. This month’s CyberTalk examines
the Internet activity of the top 20 U.S. bank holding companies ranked by their
mid-1997 assets. It focuses on their U.S. activities in the areas of PC banking,
PC securities trading, mutual fund distribution, and insurance distribution.
This summary addresses only activities offered or described on a bank’s Web
site. If the bank conducts the activity but does not describe or offer it on the
Web, this examination will not identify it. Some key findings of this
examination are given.
January 1998
No CyberTalk.
December 1997
Every so often it is useful to try to place activities conducted by the
insurance industry on the Internet within the context of activities being
conducted by other types of organizations. This issue of CyberTalk examines the
position of the insurance industry with respect to organizations that serve as
"integrators" on the Internet. The brokerage firm Piper Jaffray
describes "integrators" as organizations that integrate financial
information and transactions, offer advice, control consumer access, and assist
with purchases.
November 1997
A big question a year and a half ago was whether insurance companies would take
advantage of the Internet to try to sell directly to end customers, bypassing
their agents. A review of the 20 U.S. companies cited on the Wall Street
Journal's 1996 list of the world's 50 largest insurers provides one answer to
that question-no, at least not on their main sites. The companies cited on the
list are, in order of size, Prudential, MetLife, AIG, Cigna, Hartford, State
Farm, Aetna, TIAA, New York Life, Allstate, Travelers, Lincoln National,
American General, CNA, Nationwide, Northwestern Mutual, John Hancock, MassMutual,
Principal, and Transamerica.
October 1997
As this column has noted before, the Internet poses a threat to the business
model of insurance agents because it allows insurance companies to sell directly
to end customers. So far, however, relatively few major insurance companies are
selling directly on the Internet; most of these are companies that were doing so
already. This month's column examines the direct sales effort of one insurance
company, Liberty Health, a Canadian subsidiary of Liberty Mutual Insurance. It
then shows how a small company started by agents, Insurance InLinea, is
attempting to boost the role of agents on the Internet.
September 1997
This month's CyberTalk examines CIGNA's Internet site, which has grown from
100 pages at the beginning of 1996 to over 1,000 at present. This site is both
rich in information and comprehensive in its treatment of CIGNA's activities.
The site is intended to boost recognition of CIGNA's brand and to position CIGNA
as an organization involved in "the business of caring." In the
future, the site will acquire important customer service functions, according to
John Goldsmith, an assistant vice president for interactive marketing at CIGNA.
August 1997
This month's CyberTalk examines what multinational insurers are doing on the
Internet. The emphasis is on insurers that generate a high percentage of their
total premiums from their international activities. A list of these companies
appeared in the LOMA research report entitled Global Survey of the Life
Insurance Industry.
July 1997
This month's CyberTalk examines Internet activity in the insurance and banking
industries in Canada. Both industries are aggressively adding functionality and
information to their Internet sites.
June 1997
This month's CyberTalk examines the sites of two large U.S. insurance companies:
Prudential and New York Life. Both have made major commitments of resources to
their Internet sites.
May 1997
This month's CyberTalk examines some innovative Internet technologies at a
high level.and provides references to sources of in-depth information about
them.
April 1997
This month's Cybertalk focuses on new business models in the securities
industry and the increasing complexity of financial services web sites.
March 1997
This second anniversary edition of CyberTalk highlights the changes that have
taken place over the past year in insurance Internet activity--from RFQs to
calculators to digital certificates and more, companies show strong efforts to
diversify and grow their Internet applications.
February 1997
This month's CyberTalk examines the convergence of Internet insurance shopping
malls, the revision and introduction of several international Web sites, and
describes how a home banking service is evolving to allow EFTs from the
customer's bank account to other financial institutions.
January 1997
This month's Cybertalk looks further at insurers and electronic commerce,
examining websites that allow customers access to their account information on
the Internet and looking at a number of applications that allow insurance
companies to operate core business transactions over the Internet
December 1996
This month's Cybertalk examines the growing relationships among the providers of
personal financial management software, financial shopping mall Web sites,
back-end transaction processors, and financial institutions.
November 1996
The second of a two-month series on the activities of the securities
industry on the Internet.
October 1996
The first of a two-month series on the activities of the securities industry,
particularly the stock portion of that industry, on the Internet.
September 1996
As regulatory pressures lessen and banks target consumers more aggressively,
insurers are beginning to take the potential of the Internet more seriously than
ever before.
August 1996
The August 1996 column presents a selection of the most pertinent regulatory
comments regarding the legal status of Internet distribution. How can existing
laws about the distribution of financial services-developed for a paper-based
environment-be modified to work in cyberspace?
July 1996
The July 1996 CyberTalk article focuses on a variety of developments, including
new and enhanced sites, recent home banking announcements, and digital
signatures.
June 1996
Agents, Brokers, and the Internet. The June 1996 column examines how agents and
brokers use the Internet, and how insurers use the Internet to communicate with
agents and brokers.
May 1996
Bancassurance and the Internet
April 1996
A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision is likely to result in increased interest
on the part of U.S. banks in selling insurance. Banks in the United Kingdom and
France have been long have been able to do so, and some have even integrated
insurance into bank products. Many of these banks have Internet sites, where
they provide excellent descriptions of their products. This month's column
describes three of these sites: the Bank of Scotland and the Bradford &
Bingley Building Society in the U.K. and Banque SOFINCO in France. These sites
suggest possible future directions for the U.S. bancassurance market.
March 1996
When CyberTalk began in March 1995, only ten insurance and financial services
companies had home pages on the World Wide Web. Today the number of insurance
companies with sites on the Internet has climbed to over 80 in the United States
and over 40 in the rest of the world. This month's column highlights
developments over the past year.
February 1996
This month's column examines several developments in the banking industry that
have important implications for insurance companies trying to do business
online. These developments include the proliferation of home banking programs --
including one that operates on the Internet -- and the first US bank-backed
digital cash experiment on the Internet. In addition, this column notes the
progress being made in Canada to develop an electronic market for disability and
life insurance. Brief accounts of the Internet sites operated by TIAA-CREF,
General American, Employers Health Insurance, Insular Life, and the FLMI Society
of Winnipeg also appear.
January 1996
The January issue of CyberTalk describes how ITT Hartford has upgraded its Web
site. It also describes the Web sites of Transamerica, Prudential Securities,
and Allianz. In addition, it profiles the homepage of RxCONNECTIONS, a Revco
subsidiary that provides pharmaceutical services to the managed care industry.
The discussion of insurance shopping malls continues.
December 1995
The December issue of CyberTalk covers insurance shopping malls, bank sales of
insurance through QuickQuote, new Web sites of US and UK subdiaries for foreign
insurance companies, and the Web sites of AON Alliance, Ohio National Life, and
the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
|