From the Editor:

Two years ago, at the ACORD/LOMA Conference held in Las Vegas, Gartner Group research director Kimberly Harris told an audience: “We hear the insurance industry is behind, but I don’t think you are. Yes, you have legacy systems to maintain that hamper you from moving forward, but with Web services and ACORD XML Standards, most industries can’t hold a candle to you.”

Today, to those comments we should add mobile technology. With its workforce that is more mobile by design than in other areas of the financial services industry, the manner in which the insurance industry has embraced mobile technology has been truly cutting edge. Whereas in other sectors mobile technology is prevalent for communicating, in insurance it is in use for working. It’s being employed to streamline the workflow process, and not only on a test basis.

In our cover story, Farmers Insurance of Nebraska reveals how its investment in mobility solutions has revolutionized the way it does business – to the point that many of its claims agents have actually asked that their desktops be removed. There have been many more wireless claims success stories.

In addition, as Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 incorporates the mobile advances of Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and a few others, some insurers have been quick to implement benefits such as push technology, for automatic cell phone email alerts and remote wipe to destroy data on phones that have been lost or stolen.

These are just examples of why in a research report earlier this year TowerGroup analysts Bob Egan and Karen Pauli called mobility “an inevitable technology solution for insurers.”

Meanwhile, breakthroughs of varying sorts are being made throughout the financial services industry, and four particularly noteworthy projects are being recognized in this issue. The Windows in Financial Services Developer Awards honors four IT projects for their creative and inventive use of some of the newest Microsoft technology.

Winners include a .NET 2.0 rate-quoting tool at Allstate that stands apart from its competitors. It can handle many more users, was built with the just-released ASP.NET AJAX (that we have all read about under its code name Atlas) and leverages many of the benefits of .NET 2.0.

Wachovia’s online cash management portal Wachovia Connection received a major upgrade of its Information Reporting functionality. It has been transformed into a robust, flexible reporting solution, capable of integrating multiple data sources across disparate platforms.

In capital markets, some of the newest technology was not only used, but extended to fit the needs of Merrill Lynch’s data services framework project. At Credit Suisse, an alternative investment trading platform serving hedge funds, funds of funds, and private equity incorporated .NET, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Office 2007, SharePoint and Excel Services.

The awards will be handed out at Microsoft’s 5th Annual Financial Services Developer Conference, but the details are all here, inside this issue.

- Renee Wijnen Caruthers