What’s New: In Brief (March 19, 2007)

A.M. Best Co. has withdrawn the financial strength rating (FSR) of B++ (Good) and assigned a category of NR-5 (Not Formally Followed) to Insurance Corporation of Newfoundland Limited (ICON) (Newfoundland, Canada).
This rating action is a result of ICON’s amalgamation into its sister company, AXA General Insurance Company (AXA General) (Ontario, Canada), formerly Anglo Canada General Insurance Company, A.M. Best announced in a press release.
AXA General is a wholly owned subsidiary of AXA Assurances Inc. (Quebec), which is wholly owned by AXA Canada Inc. (Quebec). The amalgamation of ICON into AXA General became effective January 1, 2007.

IFS Premium Financing has enhanced its online broker functionality, adding the benefit of processing renewal quotes and contracts online.
“IFS wants to help the broker with client retention and through our online system, we can now generate renewal quotes and proceed directly to a new contract, IFS Premium vice president of sales and marketing Darrell Blenus said in a press release.
Blenus added: We provide a simple four-click process to achieve a renewal contract quote, allowing the brokers the capacity to change underwriter, premium and addresses before the contract is produced. We even offer an opportunity to upgrade the insured to a continuous contract, thus insuring the brokers future business with that client.
IFS currently offers complete online functions for quotes, additional premium, payment posting, account look-up, contract generation and now renewals.