What’s New: In Brief (December 07, 2007)

Chubb Insurance Company of Canada has taken steps to improve its handling of each of the 125,000 telephone calls it receives each year, by migrating to an IP telephony platform.
Internet telephony is the use of the Internet rather than the traditional telephone company infrastructure and rate structure to exchange spoken or other telephone information.
Chubb has partnered with Unity Telecom, an Avaya BusinessPartner, to migrate to Avaya Communication Manager, Avaya’s flagship IP telephony platform.
Chubb said one of its key requirements is that the new system should give the company the means to proactively differentiate between various types of customers and their needs before the call reached an agent’s desk, so each customer will receive efficient, effective service on their first call.
Avaya’s intelligent call routing is designed to reduce the amount of time customers and agents spend manually entering call information each time a call is accepted.
“Within months of implementing Avaya’s technology, agents reduced the initial information portion of a customer call by eight seconds, and were able to
spend more time discussing questions and concerns,” Chubb noted in a press release.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services has lowered its counterparty credit rating on Marsh & McLennan Cos. (MMC) to ‘BBB-‘ from ‘BBB’ and lowered its short-term rating on MMC to ‘A-3’ from ‘A-2’.
At the same time, Standard & Poor’s removed the ratings from CreditWatch with negative implications. The outlook is stable.
“The rating action reflects the many challenges the Marsh Inc. subsidiary faces over the next two years as demonstrated by disappointing third-quarter 2007 operating results,” Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Steven Ader said in a press release. “Marsh posted an operating loss resulting from the unsuccessful implementation of initiatives that, in addition to generating a substantial increase in operating expenses, posed a material distraction to servicing and selling to clients.”
S&P’s said remedial actions are expected to immediately and positively affect Marsh’s performance. Nevertheless, the ratings agency said, Marsh’s current rating “incorporates the expectation that prospective operating performance will continue to be adversely affected by the delay in modifying Marsh’s business model to account for the elimination of contingent commissions, which constituted [US]$845 million of total risk and insurance segment operating income of [US]$1.8 billion in 2003.”