Business News: Tristar, George Hills, RiskStream Collaborative, Verisk

Tristar Insurance Group, a privately owned third-party claims administrator based in Long Beach, Calif., has agreed to purchase Aspen Risk Management Group.

Aspen, located in San Diego, provides remote ergonomics, online service platforms, and consulting services to commercial and government clients. Aspen Chief Executive Officer said the firm was founded 15 years ago to offer expertise in risk control and workplace safety.

“Joining Tristar gives us the chance to carry our primary purpose of saving lives, preventing injuries and illnesses, and protecting our clients from harm all across America,” he said in a press release.

All Aspen employees will continue operating out of the existing locations under the name Aspen Risk Management Group, a Tristar Company.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

George Hills, a third-party administrator based in the Sacramento, Calif. area, announced that it has acquired RMS, a San Francisco Bay Area claims administrator that serves public-sector clients.

“We have greatly expanded market share throughout California, especially the Southern California market, and now we continue strengthening our position in Northern California,” said George Hills Chief Executive Officer John Chaquica.

RMS, located in Sonoma County, focuses on public entities with extensive experience in general liability and property claims with a focus on claim adjusting, investigations, litigation management, and representation during settlement conferences, George Hills said in a press release.

George Hills is based in Rancho Cordova, Calif. and has offices throughout the state. The firm focuses on claims management, joint powers authorities management, and related insurance services for public sector and private businesses.

The RiskStream Collaborative, which is part of the insurance industry research group The Institutes, said the organization has validated that its Canopy first-notice-of loss blockchain product can handle a large volume of simultaneous member transactions.

RiskStream said in a press release that it completed a “soak test” of the blockchain software and cloud infrastructure. Over a 12-hour period, Canopy completed more than 500,000 transactions.

“This is a monumental step for the RiskStream Collaborative, as the soak test validates Canopy’s capabilities within the insurance space,” stated Christopher McDaniel, president of The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative. “We can now confirm that production-volume transactions can be securely and successfully sent and received within the Canopy framework by multiple members.”

The test modeled the volume, variety, and velocity of transactions that RiskStream Collaborative members anticipate when they move to production with Canopy—including asymmetrical loads based on member market share. For this test, eleven Canopy nodes were deployed across multiple Amazon cloud regions, Risk Stream said.

Verisk has joined with information technology provider Guidewire to publish the A-PLUS auto and property contribution accelerators for personal lines.

The accelerators allow Guidewire customers to submit loss history data to Verisk and unlock access to tools that insurers can use to verify past claims activity, make informed pricing decisions, and improve customer satisfaction, the data analytics provider said in a press release.

Data within the Guidewire system is automatically mapped to the A-PLUS record layout, saving insurers the time and expense of manually formatting and uploading this data to Verisk, the company said.

Verisk, based in Jersey City, N.J., said the new accelerators build on several Verisk data tools already available for users of Guidewire InsuranceSuite and A-PLUS auto and property.