Novarica Announces Nominees for First Novarica Research Council Impact Awards, Largest Peer-Jury Awarded Recognition in the Industry

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Novarica, a research and advisory services division of Novantas LLC focused on markets, operations, and technology for insurers and financial institutions, announced today the nominees for their first annual Novarica Research Council Impact Awards. The awards will honor best practices in insurance industry IT initiatives and strategy, and with all 300+ CIO and senior IT executive members of the Council invited to judge the awards, this will be the largest peer-jury awarded recognition in the industry.

Nominees were selected across four categories—Practice, Quick Hit, Transformation, and Expansion—with three nominees chosen for each (a tie in the Expansion category meant four nominees were selected). The nominees were selected by a committee from a collection of case studies drafted by Novarica from submissions by insurers. The nominating committee included CIOs Andy Wood (Wilton Re), Dan Simpson (Trustmark), Eric Bulis (SBLI USA), Larry Fortin (Millers Mutual Group), Mark Berthiaume (Chubb), Pete Moreau (Amica), Piyush Singh (Great American Insurance Company), Reuben Broadfoot (LifeMap), Sal Abano (Tower Insurance), Stuart Tainsky (PURE), and Tim Billow (ING).

Winners will be determined by votes from the 300+ members of the Novarica Research Council,a moderated knowledge-sharing community of insurer CIOs and senior IT executives. The nominees and winners will be recognized at the Novarica Research Council Impact Awards Event, to be held in New York City on October 30^th. More information on this event is available at http://www.novarica.com/impact2012-event/. The event will also feature presentations and panel discussions by Novarica experts and CIOs from the nominating committee.

The nominees for each category are:

Practice

Erie overhauled IT cost reporting by using PPM application to track all costs across 13 discreet portfolios.
CAMICO initiated the Open Innovation Program to allow employees to submit, vote, and support ideas to leverage employee creativity.
Allstate Financial established an enterprise-wide test environment which uses one algorithm to scrub data across applications.

Quick Hit

Great American created customer mobile apps to deliver self-service functionality.
Oregon Mutual deployed an iPad and cloud-based agency relationship management tool.
Zurich allows program administrators to upload commercial specialty business in real time from their agency systems.

Transformation

American Safety undertook an initiative to consolidate all underwriting units across the company into a single system.
A large multiline P/C insurer undertook a three year project to replace legacy policy administration systems with a modern configurable system.
Capitol replaced multiple legacy surety systems with a single modern platform and enabled online self-service for agents.

Expansion

Cincinnati Financial transformed how independent agents process business using ACORD XML Standards and real time from agency systems.
Patriot National created a web-based, real time rating and quoting portal capable of quoting companies in all states.
Allstate Financial enabled producers and customers to legally bind an electronic signature to a life insurance application via Internet.
PEMCO created SmartSearch, allowing CSRs to find customers without exact spelling or policy number, and The Hub, which offers a consolidated customer overview.