In brief

Government flood plans revealed

Insurance group chairman John Greenway will speak about the government's plans to improve the flooding situation at a conference organised by Munters for July 11.

The conference, called Riding the Storm and the Handling of Flood Claims, will be held at the Tower Conference Centre in London.

Other speakers will come from the Building Research Establishment, Munich Re, Aon Risk Control, McLarens Toplis, the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters and the Financial Ombudsman Service.

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No buses for NU
NORWICH Union (NU) has pulled out of the bus and coach market with immediate effect. It will write no new business for vehicles with 18 seats or more, nor invite renewals on existing business.

Buses and coaches represent less than 1% of the insurer's commercial business. A placing facility has been arranged with Crowe Syndicate 963 and specific arrangements are being put in place for the Bayliss and Cooke Coachline scheme.

Underwriting director John Seaton said the withdrawal followed a review of NU's commercial motor account.

PR man on the move
James Duffell has left his position as head of public relations with Norwich Union after an 18-year stint with the company. He was previously head of media relations at Norwich Union before the merger with CGU. He moved to his last position soon afterwards.

Norwich Union has been restructured its public relations team and further announcements will be made shortly.

Scoping out fraudsters
U-PLEX Insurance Service is to launch a fraud management system called Fraudscope, which it claims will revolutionise the front-end claims process within a year.

The system combines the use of human behavioural issues with known detail such as those given on the claim forms. Information is fed into an algorithm that analyses the relationship between the details and identifies if the claim is truthful, fraudulent or needs more investigation.

The system is being made into a software package to be used by the insurance industry, that will fit into claims handling system. Groupama is one of the first insurers to invest in the software.

U-Plex has formed a marketing alliance with loss adjuster Miller Fisher to work on the system.