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TECHNOLOGY

Premier Healthcare Exchange Inc. announced the upcoming launch of its Xpert Connect, a fully integrated suite of in-house tools and services for health-care cost containment. Xpert Connect can analyze more than 90 percent of all claims processed through a single file extract, possibly eliminating errors and lowering expenses.

Nanotechnology

The Innovation Society Ltd. of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and TUV SUD of Munich, Germany, have developed a system to manage nanotechnology risks that could be available for use later this year. Called the Cenarios system, it could ensure that companies using nanotechnologies properly identify and manage their risks according to state-of-the-art standards.

Modeling

Modeling firm Eqecat Inc. has unveiled its Offshore Energy Model to help insurers manage and quantify their exposure in the offshore energy market. The model is expected to be released in the second quarter of 2007. It covers a range of risk in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas platforms, pipelines and other offshore infrastructure, and can account for the removal of debris, business interruption and contingent business interruption.

INSURANCE

Redevelopment

Lexington Insurance Co., a member company of American International Group Inc., released its historic rehabilitation tax credit insurance, a new coverage meant to protect owners and developers of commercial properties who qualify for federal rehabilitation tax credit against a financial loss if the property suffers significant damage from an insured event that results in a reduction in, or recapture of, the tax credit. Businesses that rehabilitate and use historic structures constructed prior to 1936 can qualify for federal tax credits under Internal Revenue Code Section 47.

D&O

XL Insurance Ltd. announced that it is enhancing its existing directors' and officers' insurance policy tailored for U.S. publicly traded companies with worldwide exposures. The revised policy is called A PLUS D&O Advantage, and provides primary coverage or excess and difference-in-conditions coverage above an existing D&O liability policy. But the new policy does not have an exclusions section and provides additional coverage for extradition costs and blanket coverage for outside directorships of nonprofit and privately owned for-profit entities.

Tow Trucks

Swiss Re's Commercial Insurance and BISYS have launched an insurance program for tow-truck operators. The policies will be underwritten by Westport Insurance Corp., a Swiss Re company, and designed for professional towers, including those with service garages and body shops, for all states except Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Coverage includes commercial auto liability, physical damage, general liability, inland marine and property.

Catastrophe

Guy Carpenter & Co. LLC, part of the Marsh & McLennan Cos., released its SelectCat product. Index-based, the product could provide reinsurers with capacity, flexibility and rational pricing to manage property catastrophe risks. Similar in concept to a collateralized debt obligation, the product can also allow retrocessionaires and other capital providers to access portfolios of insurance risks that fit their risk appetite, reducing the concentration and operational risk associated with writing a single catastrophe program.

Municipalities

The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co. released its new tax interruption coverage that could help towns, school districts and other municipalities recover tax revenue lost when an insured accident causes physical damage to residential or commercial property. Tax interruption coverage is a turnkey reinsurance program from HSB that can be used as an enhancement to current property forms for a portfolio of public-entity business by public entity writers who partner with HSB.

--Compiled by staff from news and company reports

May 1, 2007

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