| Great-West Lifeco's US Subsidiary Announces Agreement To Acquire ...
WINNIPEG, April 9, 2007 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Great-West Lifeco Inc. today announced that its U.S. subsidiary, Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company, has entered into an agreement to acquire an 80% majority interest in Benefit Management Corp., whose principal subsidiary is Allegiance Benefit Plan Management, Inc., a Montana-based third-party administrator of employee health plans. The existing majority shareholder will retain a 20% interest in Benefit Management Corp. Lifeco expects the transaction will be accretive to earnings in 2007 and subsequent years. The transaction will add nearly 90,000 medical members to Lifeco's Great-West Healthcare division. It includes Allegiance's physicians and hospitals network, as well as Benefit Management Corp.'s other subsidiaries. These include a new company that was created to sell fully-insured health plans in Montana, and a company that provides medical management services, primarily in Montana.
Insurance Industry's Profits Rose In 2006
NEW YORK -- The headline numbers were eye-popping: Allstate reported a record $5 billion profit for 2006. State Farm Insurance's profit climbed 65 percent for the year. St. Paul Travelers' earnings rose sixfold in the fourth quarter, American International Group's rose eightfold. A year and a half after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, profits at the nation's major property-casualty insurance companies soared -- and are expected to be strong again in 2007, according to estimates by the A.M. Best Co. rating agency. Critics charge that the insurers are doing well financially by shorting the people who bought their products -- including hundreds of consumers who still haven't gotten settlements for their Katrina claims. The industry, in turn, denies taking advantage of consumers, crediting its growing profitability instead to fewer storms last year and improved business procedures.
ATERAS awarded new conversion
Dallas (ANTARA News/PRNewswire-AsiaNet) - ATERAS announced today that they have been selected by Progressive Casualty Insurance Company for the Policy Number Expansion Project, using DB-Shuttle(TM) Enterprise Change capabilities. This project follows the successful ATERAS migration of Progressive's IDMS CORE Claims System to a CICS COBOL DB2 environment, retiring IDMS and ADS/Online completely. ATERAS will use its DB-Shuttle Enterprise Change technology to perform the Policy Number Expansion. The purpose of the project is to use a standard automated method to identify and change the field definition and length of 36 different DB2 columns (including policy number, name and address) across multiple databases in the Progressive Enterprise. DB-Shuttle's Enterprise Change technology will also find and change all related program variables, regardless of the variable naming conventions and the use of these fields in the business logic.
Austin may soon place cameras at red lights
Austin may soon become the 35th Texas city to use cameras to catch individuals running red lights, said David Gerard of the City of Austin's Department of Public Works.
Gerard said a pilot plan will install two red light cameras in the city. One is expected to be located at the Riverside Drive and Pleasant Valley Road intersection, but the second one is unconfirmed, he said.
"We are currently reviewing proposals from two vendors," Gerard said. "The pilots will begin probably around the middle of May."
Citations will not be issued during the 30-to-60-day pilot program, but the department will be monitoring the cameras to make sure they record violations correctly, he said. If the cameras work correctly and vehicles can be identified, the department will offer recommendations to the Austin City Council after the pilot program is over.
A lifesaver for the self-employed
Music-store owner Scott Hillje was concerned for his 11-year-old son last year when he fell at the school playground and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. Unlike many self-employed people, Hillje wasn't worrying about how he was going to pay the medical bills. Every month, $500 is automatically deducted from Hillje's account to go to HSA Bank. From that account, he pays a premium for a family health plan with a high deductible, while the remainder awaits spending on medical needs and grows from year to year if there is anything left at the end of the year. While Americans and the medical community have been a little slow to take up the idea of a health savings account, or HSA, as a way to control medical costs, flexibility and tax-friendly changes to how HSAs work are getting people's attention.
How To Get Your First Mortgage
Editor's Note: First time home buyers can be confused by the process. There is the loan process, pre-qualification, looking for a home, documents for title, loans, insurance taxes etc. Here is an article on the subject: When it comes to lifetime markers getting a first mortgage is a major event. With a mortgage you''re magically transformed from occupant to owner and from tenant to titleholder. Applying for a mortgage used to be seen as a battle of sorts, a competition where the only winners were those who sold headache remedies and paper by the truckload. But now finding the right mortgage is faster and easier than ever -- but only if you know how to make the system work for you. If you compare loan applications today with the ordeals of even ten years ago you can see a marked difference.
Q4 2006 Affirmative Insurance Holdings Inc. Earnings Conference ...
OPERATOR: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Affirmative Insurance Holdings 2006 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is Latisha, and I will be your coordinator for today. [OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. At this time, I will turn the presentation over to Mr. Mark Pape, Chief Financial Officer. Please proceed, sir. MARK PAPE, CFO & EVP, AFFIRMATIVE INSURANCE HOLDINGS INC.: Thank you, Latisha. Good morning, and welcome to the 2006 year-end earnings conference call for Affirmative Insurance Holdings. As Latisha said, I'm Mark Pape, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President. With me on the call today are Kevin Callahan, our CEO and Chairman; Sean McPadden, Executive Vice President and the President of our Insurance Company; and Joe Fisher, our General Counsel.
Supporters: Ferrell guilty of culture not sexism
ST. LOUIS (AP) - Last month, Fred Ferrells way of greeting and treating women cost him his job as Missouris agriculture director. But for many in Charleston, where Ferrell and his wife have lived since 1964, what some see as sexual harassment is nothing more than the culture of the Bootheel, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported yesterday. Charleston, about 150 miles south of St. Louis, has 5,000 residents. "I think its more cultural dissimilarity than sexual harassment," said Liz Anderson, editor and owner of the Enterprise-Courier, a weekly newspaper in Charleston, and a high school classmate of Ferrell. "The whole Bootheel is different from the rest of the state. Its more Southern." At the Rolwing-Moxley Seed Co., Ferrell often stopped by secretary Terra Slaydens desk and called out, "Hi, princess." Slayden, 47, said it was "just his normal greeting." At Ferrells farm office, his longtime secretary, Pam Whittington, said her boss used to call her a "show dog." "Thats just a term for, You look good today," Whittington said.
Panama system helping Yahoo compete
Megan Hanely, vice president of direct marketing for Esurance, an online insurance company in San Francisco that advertises on Yahoo, welcomes Panama and said it has helped her sell more policies. Around the same percentage of Yahoo users click on her ads, but far more of them become customers. Hanely praised Yahoo's system for allowing her to better target Esurance ads by geography, an important consideration in insurance because of the variations in policies and rates across the country. The new formula, she said, makes the ad auction more rational because her company doesn't always have to quickly react if a competitor raises its bid by a penny. In any case, Hanely said that she hopes Yahoo succeeds, and that Google has healthy competition, if only for selfish reasons. "Having one dominant company, or even two dominant companies, is bad for competition," she said.
Insurance can give a tail a happy ending
THE owners of Scottish terrier Bonnie were horrified when they were told that a condition the vet had been treating as a pulled muscle was in fact cancer. Archie Graham, from Blyth Bridge in the Borders, said: "She had been limping, so we thought she had torn a muscle. But when it didn't clear up, the vet did some more tests and found her toe bone had changed colour. .
STUDY: ILLUSION OF HEALTH INSURANCE CAN FAIL TO PROTECT CALIFORNIANS
Sickness or injury can leave people in serious financial jeopardy even when they have health insurance, according to a report released today by The Access Project and Brandeis University. The Illusion of Coverage: How Health Insurance Fails People When They Get Sick, reports findings based on in-depth interviews with dozens of insured Americans in seven states. The report spotlights how some patients in California with insurance discovered too late that their coverage was capped or that certain procedures weren't covered. Some mortgaged their homes, others racked up credit card debt, some even died. “Widespread debt and access problems among insured people represent major product failure in our private health insurance market," stated Carol Pryor , Senior Policy Analyst at The Access Project and co-author of the report.
Kenya: Minister to Bring Back to House Rejected Health Bill
Health minister Mrs Charity Ngilu says she will re-introduce the Health Insurance Bill to Parliament amid calls for health sector reforms from the insurance industry. The Bill was earlier passed by Parliament but rejected by President Kibaki. "I hope my fellow members will see the need for affordable health care for Kenyans and pass this Bill," Ngilu told The Standard. The minister was responding to calls by the Association of Kenya Insurance (AKI), which is asking the ministry to move fast and make amendments to the Bill. .
Man, insurer battle over pursuit damages
A Georgia man is suing his insurance company to pay for damages caused to his luxury model car by police at the end of a high-speed chase. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Saturday that the Lexus driven by Jennifer Natbony, 19, on her fateful 2003 night out on the town was damaged by police to the tune of $12,612, and Jennifer's father is now battling Progressive over the bill. After a 20-minute chase that reached 100 mph, Cobb County police hit the Lexus' rear bumper on the left side to force the vehicle to come to a stop between another patrol car and a guardrail. The Lexus, owned by the teen's mother, was reportedly beaten up as officers smashed the windows to gain access to the driver who was hunkered down on the floor of the car. She was not hurt, later pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and evading police, and was sentenced to community service.
Owner of Durham's much-loved Starlite Drive-In dies at 55
DURHAM - The unexpected death of Starlite Drive-In owner Robert Franklin Groves could mean a final curtain call for one of the Triangle's most nostalgic landmarks.Groves, 55, died early Friday after a brief hospital stay.For many, the loss was a gloomy passing of a bit of Americana in Durham that had not fallen victim to the multiscreen mall cineplexes changing the suburban landscape."That's the only drive-in movie theater that I even know exists," said Kelly Caudill, a Bahama resident who lived next door to Groves for three years. "I don't know what we're going to do without him because he made the Starlite. He was the Starlite."Groves, an Army veteran, was born and raised in Cumberland, Md.He left Maryland in 1970 for North Carolina, said his brother, James R. Groves of Cartersville, Ga.After several years in the Army, Groves was drawn into the movie business that he would stick with for the rest of his life.That commitment would be difficult at times.
EMS:Courage And Compassion In Action
Welcome to "EMS:Courage and Compassion In Action," a weekly column written by Village Ambulance Services Operations Manager and paramedic Shawn Godfrey. Godfrey's columns will appear on Monday and will focus on the reality of the emergency services medical profession. Down And Out? Not So Simple I would guess that when most of you hear the term homeless, you imagine a disheveled street-person or vagrant sleeping on a park bench, or pushing a rickety grocery cart packed with the entire lot of his or her possessions, or hustling up and down the street, asking passersby for spare pocket change. I would also speculate that most of you consider homelessness a dilemma primarily found in larger cities. Prior to the start of my emergency medical services (EMS) career, I harbored that same notion.
Time for an insurance check-up
Beyond the rather obvious possibility that you may suffer financially from a fire, a theft, a liability claim, etc., the current political climate and realities regarding the availability and cost of insurance make it imperative that you take a look at your insurance program as a part of your business financial plan. An annual check-up of your insurance program is just as important for your financial health and peace of mind as the annual check-up with your medical practitioner is for your physical health and well-being. You may not be aware of all the exposures to accidental loss and the types of insurance coverage needed to protect you and your business. This is understandable. Your business is not medicine or insurance. Your business does include making sure the insurance program you have in place is proper and meets the protection needs of your operation.
People in business
John Olivier has been named director of systems and programming at Bizzuka Inc. Prior to joining the company, he was senior systems analyst, assistant network administrator and project manager for a local oilfield services company. Olivier has 15 years of experience, including coordinating multiple IT and software development projects. A graduate of UL, he is a member of the ACM Society, a Microsoft Business Solutions Certified Professional and holds expert rating certifications in multiple software languages. .
Nationwide digs into downtown expansion plan
Nationwide broke ground Thursday on a new building that when open will give the insurer more room that some small towns.
The Ohio-based insurer has continually expanded its physical and employment presence in Des Moines since buying Allied Insurance in 1998. Its now adding 285,000 square feet of space to the Allied headquarters building in the 1100 block of Locust Street downtown. And on Thursday company and government leaders turned ceremonial spades of dirt to start construction of a 350,000-square-foot building one block to the west.
Both projects, and a nearby parking garage, are estimated to cost $142 million.
Eventually, the downtown campus will have 1.2 million square feet of space. Thats nearly 27 acres of space.
Supersizing is how Kim Austen, president of Allied, described the latest addition.
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