Global Financial Intelligence (GFI) and Information Exchange areZurich's (www.zurich.com) mostrecent industry offerings. The insurance provider's new tools focuson data sharing and use.

The GFI platform, according to Zurich, will initially offerservices via modules for claims (providing international programcustomers with critical claims information) and risk engineering(offering customers to comprehensive risk engineering data).

A Web-based system, GFI provides information, services, andproducts to customers with focus on P&C and marine coverage.Fifty countries worth of information is stored in GFI's database;customers can access their own data from any Web-connectedcomputer.

Zurich's goal with GFI, according to program manager Joe Lunn,is "to offer global corporate customers both the claims and riskengineering information they need to manage their global activitiesmore effectively. The GFI program is ... a sophisticated tool toenable customers to analyze and manage their risk information in atimely manner and on a global basis."

GFI's claims module offers customers access to worldwide claimsinformation, loss reports (in nine currencies!), user-definedfields that capture claims-related data, standard or customizedreports online, and data reporting for extraction and upload toother solutions.

The risk engineering module gives access to a global riskassessment reporting system, advice and implementation managementfunctions, a safety training application, a knowledge repository,virtual risk management, and an Internet search engine.

Meanwhile, Zurich's Information Exchange-an e-businesssolution-will allow customers and agents access to proprietary dataat a single, consolidated site, according to the company.Information Exchange creates Web sites for Zurich's corporatecustomers to grant access to policy information, statements,account design, site codes, cost projections, loss reporting, riskengineering, existing and new products, and more.

"The ability to facilitate Internet access to comprehensive datain a variety of formats will be a significant differentiatingfactor for Zurich Financial Services within the expanding globalcorporate customer market," Lunn said. "It will also give us a morecomplete view of our business relationships with each customer,helping us to better understand their needs which, in turn, willenable us to serve these customers better."

Information Exchange runs on an AIX Unix box with WebSphere asthe Web application server and a DB2/UDB database.

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