What’s New: In Brief (September 11, 2009)

Zurich in Canada has appointed Bob Fellows as senior vice president of distribution, marketing and communications for Zurich’s business in Canada.
Fellows has 30 years of experience working in the Canadian insurance industry.
In his distribution role, he will be responsible for driving Canada’s distribution strategy; in particular, he will be called upon to accelerate the progress of the Canada Top 50 Broker Program.
In his marketing role, Fellows will be accountable for continuing to build on Zurich’s HelpPoint brand positioning in the Canadian market. He will be supporting the development of customer value propositions in all of Zurich’s target segments.
Fellows joins Zurich after working for eight years at St. Paul Fire and Marine (Travelers Canada), where he served as president and chief agent. He has held various leadership positions with Royal & Sun Alliance, Allendale Insurance and Arkwright Insurance.

Zurich in Canada is installing a new end-to-end claims management solution, provided by Guidewire Software, to increase efficiency.
“At Zurich, Canada, we’re committed to offering our brokers and customers exceptional service in line with our Zurich HelpPoint strategy,” said Alister Campbell, president and CEO of Zurich in Canada. “We need effective loss cost management and our customers expect a fast and fair claims handling process — the new system will help us to continue to achieve both.
When operational, the new system will enable Zurich, Canada to:
•    handle claims operations more efficiently;
•    tailor claims  handling to customers’ individual requirements more proactively;
•    reduce manual processes to give the claims staff more time to service their customers effectively;
•    improve and expand the company’s ability to  capture all relevant information, resulting in better data quality, reduced  claims expenses, reduced loss leakage, and better analysis for tracking  claims; and
•    continue to attract top  talent to the company  and its claims team.