What’s new: In brief (November 15, 2004)

Standard & Poor’s says it will take no rating action on the three life insurers mentioned in the civil charges filed by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer against California intermediary Universal Life Resources. The three insurers MetLife, Prudential and UnumProvident are named as having paid Universal special compensation which Spitzer alleges motivated Universal to place policies with these insurers. However, S&P notes that the three insurers received less than 8% of their group insurance premiums from Universal, so at this point the financial impact is not expected to be severe.

Vigil Locating Systems Corp. has named Michel Allard as director, insurers relation. Allard has more than 25 years experience with the insurance industry, including work with Boomerang tracking. His new responsibilities include marketing the Vigil technology to insurers, supervising commercial agreements with brokers and broker training.

Royal & SunAlliance and Applied Systems are working together to give brokers easier access to RSA’s “Bravo” broker portal. Through the “WARPBridge” enhancement to Applied’s Agency Manager (TAM) system, brokers will have instant access to RSA’s portal, without passwords or extra steps. The work done in RSA’s system will also be integrated back into the broker management system.