Company: Allenbrook, Inc.
Product: Phoenix 7.0
Web site: www.allenbrook.com

Allenbrook, Inc., has released Phoenix 7.0, a product thatfeatures several enhancements focusing on more comprehensivesupport for commercial lines business, including workerscompensation. Also included in the release are a number of newplatform certifications.

Magna Carta Companies, a property/casualty commercial lineswriter, has been using earlier versions of Phoenix since 1998. Ithink its one of the best all-around policy processing systems inthe marketplace simply be-cause you are in control of how you rollout or implement a particular product, says David Lawless, seniorvice president of Magna Carta.

Lawless describes Phoenix as a tool set. So you can make yourlife as miserable or as easy as you want it to be, he says. If youhave a product line you dont want to spend a lot of timedeveloping, youre not going to put the effort into it you would putinto one of your primary product lines. With the primary productlines, you are going to collect a large amount of details, and thePhoenix system allows you to do that.

Magna Carta was part of the beta testing for the newest version.Lawless says the older version fell short in the area of workerscompensation audits and the insurers ability to manage the audits.The new version gets us about 99.9 percent there, says Lawless.Workers comp [policies] are what we call audit rule policies, hesays. You dont audit the policies until the policy term hasexpired. We dont audit them until six months after the policyperiod expires. Then we have to go in and say, What was theexposure at that period of time? The insurer determines the ratesthat were in place by the states at the time of the policy andapplies a credit or a debit against that policy, according toLawless.

With states setting the rates for workers comp, it is possiblethe rates could go up or down in the midst of the policy period. Soif the workers comp rate went down three months into the policyperiod, the audit calculator has to calculate the higher rate forthe first period of the policy and the new lower rate for thesecond period of the policyall for a policy thats already expired,says Lawless.

The ability to keep track of what rates were in effect at aparticular point to audit the policy is a tremendous feature,according to Lawless. We certainly are going to get more accurateaudits, and the audits will be processed and put through sooner,which always is good, he says. To the insured, its weird you aretalking about a policy thats already expired, but this is good forthe insured, and its good for the carrier.
The release comes on the heels of an intensive, week-long customerbeta program. The process of having numerous cross-functional livecustomers that participated as stakeholders, that specialize incommercial property/casualty insurance lines, especially workerscompensation, has raised the bar in our delivering this release,says Chuck Peck, president of Allenbrook.

He believes Phoenix is capable of adding new lines ofrevenue-producing business or geography faster than other productswhile doing so with a table-driven application vs. pricey codingalternatives. This will save significant development costs alongwith integrated and lower overall maintenance costs, Peckadds.
Phoenix 7.0 is the latest release of Allenbrooks policy processing,claims ad-ministration, and accounting system for property/casualtyinsurance carriers. It also is being offered to the life market forthe first time.

Special Report: Backup Systems
New Debuts at Comdex

Long-term data storage is an important consideration, but howcan insurers protect themselves against loss of critical data thatmay be a few weeks old or may have just been created? The answermay lie in several new technologies for backup and recovery ofcritical data introduced during the Comdex 2003 Global TechnologyMarketplace held recently in Las Vegas.
CMS Products Inc. introduced its Velocity Series backup system fordesktop computers. According to Costa Mesa, Calif.-based CMS, theseries is the first all-in-one backup product to incorporate aSerial ATA (SATA) interface, providing users with complete backup,restore, disaster recovery capabilities and an externally bootablebackup system. SATA is a technology that increases the datatransfer rate between points in a computing system.

The Velocity Series is capable of clocking transfer rates of upto 1.5Gb per second, which is over three times faster than backupsystems using [other technologies], the company claims. Because itis an externally bootable system, it can respond instantly after ahard drive or operating system failure. The company is offering anoptional SATA controller card to make the technology compatible formachines that dont support the SATA interface.

CMS says the Velocity Series allows users to go back in time toaccess older versions of data from any point in time that a backupwas performed. The ability to access older versions of files isvaluable in maintaining an accurate history of documents, whichendure ongoing revisions, the company explains.
Using a synchronization component, users can move between multiplecomputers and update files, regardless of which computer generatedthe files, says CMS. The software automatically scans both the hostcomputers hard drive and the Velocity Series drive for new orchanged files and updates the out-of-date versions by synchronizingthem with the up-to-date versions.

A QuickRestore module allows users to recover data lost througha hard drive failure or accidental deletion by clicking on therestore button. The backup device performs a complete restorationof selected data from the most recent backup of the computers harddrive, the company notes. This feature reduces downtime andincreases return on investment through the decrease in help desk orIT department involvement, adds CMS.
The Velocity Series, which began shipping in December, is availablein capacities from 80GB to 200GB, with manufacturers suggestedprices starting at $299, says CMS. The product is compatible withboth Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems.

Further details are available at www.cmsproducts.com.
UltraBac Software showcased UltraBac Disaster Recovery (UBDR) Pro,which uses snapshot disk imaging technology to back up MicrosoftWindows servers and workstations. According to Bellevue,Wash.-based UltraBac, the product enables recovery of an unbootablemachine in minutes.

The company says it developed the product at the request ofdisaster recovery users who wanted an easier, faster, and morereliable method to boot dead machines than using old DOStechnology. The days of an administrator needing two hours to twodays to recover a failed server are over, says Morgan Edwards, CEOand founder of UltraBac. Now, its 15 minutes or even less on ahigh-speed network.

After installation, UBDR Pro uses an automatic scheduler to backup snapshot images of selected data to tape, disk, or other storagesystems, the company explains. A built-in locked file backup agentensures all files are backed up. The backup image file iscompressed before being transferred to a network storage location,reducing network traffic and saving storage space.

If the server or workstation protected by the product fails, itcan be restored in a matter of minutesat a rate of up to 800MB perminute on some high-speed networks, says UltraBac. To recover thefailed machine, users boot from a universal UBDR Pro CD, theninitiate a restore of the image from the storage location.

After the restore, a reboot recovers the machine 100 percent toits last pre-backup state, the company asserts. Users also mayinvoke the built-in encryption feature to complete secure backupmedia for online or offline storage security requirements.
Pricing for the stand-alone version of UBDR Pro is $695 per server,with discounts offered on multiple license purchases, the companysays.

Further information is available at www.ultrabac.com.
Lost CD- or DVD-based text data or imagessuch as PowerPointpresentations, essential documents, or claims-related photosnow maybe recoverable with CD/DVD Diagnostic, a software product fromArrowkey, Inc., Lincolnshire, Ill.
According to Arrowkey, the product can retrieve unreadable Windowsfiles from uncooperative disks with a bit of automated detectivework then copy the rescued material to the users hard drivewithoutthe need for additional hardware.

Paul Crowley, chairman of Arrowkey, said in an interview withNational Underwriter, sister publication of Tech Decisions, thatmass production of optical-based media (CD, DVD) in recent yearshas caused a reduction in the quality of new media being produced.As a result, he noted, such media may be faulty right out of thepackage, and valuable data may be compromised.
CD/DVD Diagnostic recovers data from unreadable, scratched, orcorrupt media, including CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, andDVD-RW formats. It also can be used with disks created on Macintoshand Linux systems, Arrowkey says. The product searches for andreconstructs damaged files and directories, regardless of thesoftware that originally was used to record the files.

Arrowkey says the program scans any optical disk, displays alist of all files discovered, and allows users to preview thecontents before copying all or part of them to the hard drive orexternal media. It also features readability testing of the entiredisk to gauge the extent of the damage, allowing users to determinewhether or not recovery efforts will be successful as well aswhether or not the disk will be reusable.

CD/DVD Diagnostic operates on any personal computer runningWindows 95 through Windows XP and requires several hundredmegabytes of free hard drive space to recover data from aproblematic disk, says Arrowkey. It can be used with any diskdrive, and it carries a suggested retail price of $49.99.
Further details and a free evaluation version of the software areavailable at www.arrowkey.com. Ara C.

Company: Ingenix
Product: Ingenix Third-Party Review and InvestigationServices
Web site: www.ingenix.com

Auto insurance carriers can assess third-party claims faster andmore efficiently through Ingenix Third-Party Review andInvestigation Services (TPRI). One such carrier, OneBeaconInsurance Group of Boston, is using Ingenix TPRI to assistadjusters as they negotiate third-party auto claims.

Adjusters typically must negotiate bodily injury auto cases,otherwise known as third-party claims, without the benefit ofmedical or fraud-detection training. Using Ingenix TPRI, adjustersreceive assistance from medical and antifraud experts to providethe adjuster with information essential for negotiating fair andaccurate settlements in a timely manner.

One thing that struck me about Ingenix is it has a lot ofexperience in the area and has been doing some provider fraud work,says Phil Sibilia, vice president of claims at OneBeacon. Most ofthe bill-review vendors he is familiar with, he says, dont do a lotof third-party review. The product and the services kind of matchedwhat we wanted to accomplish, he maintains.

OneBeacon wants to deliver to its adjusters a tool that helpsthem better evaluate the medical information they are presentedwith in bodily injury claims. [The product] looks at the bills andgives us information regarding the pricing, frequency, and durationof treatment, says Sibilia. It provides reports that help trackwhen the treatment occurred and helps the adjuster evaluate theclaim. It gives [the adjusters] a perspective on the medicalscompared with other charges by other providers in the samejurisdiction. There are flags that might identify potential fraudand the need to conduct additional investigations.

Sibilia concedes sometimes there is a legitimate difference ofopinion on the severity of an injury or if treatment falls outsideof American Medical Association guidelines. It doesnt necessarilyindicate fraud, but it is a potential flag that gives the adjusterthe option to conduct some additional inquiries, saysSibilia.
Ingenix TPRI organizes and reviews third-party claims, streamliningauto insurers claims processing through expert review andfindings.

Each reviewed claim is analyzed with Ingenix PowerTrak, anautomated bill-review solution that adjudicates medical billsassociated with the claim against state fee schedules, utilizationguidelines, MDR schedules, and CES guidelines.
Nurses who understand the relationship between injuries andappropriate treatments manually review each claim.
Investigators utilize up to 500 data sources to verify thelicensing status of the providers who have rendered medicalservices.
Adjusters are provided reports of review findings, includingcontact information for the nurse reviewer and other investigatorsassigned to the claim.

Ingenix has been a pleasure to work with, says Doreen Mancini,OneBeacon director for claims vendor management. It has stepped upto the plate to address our requirements, moving quickly andflexibly to meet our needs.