The chief executive of 21st Century Insurance Group (TW) wants to free American drivers from their reliance on agents to help them buy insurance. 'Consumers should not be afraid to lose the agent,' Bruce W. Marlow, 21st Century's president and chief executive said in an interview recently.

Quality Planning Corporation (QPC), the Rating Integrity Solutions company, has introduced a new data analytics product that uncovers costly insurance premium rating anomalies by comparing an insurer's rating information with thousands of independent data sources. The new RISK select product is designed specifically for states where mileage is not an important rating factor and complements QPC's existing RISK check(R) data analytics solutions that insurers use to identify and recover lost auto-insurance premium revenue.

Quality Planning Corp., has appointed of Beth Olson assistant vice president of global services and strategic partnerships. She will be based in the San Francisco head office and will report to Mike Hallenberger, vice president of sales and marketing.

Traditionally, a driver's flirtations with high speed and hard cornering are a private matter. Insurers have been kept in the dark, unable to differentiate that aggressive blur from safer drivers, except when the former leaves a fender on the guardrail or gets nabbed by a police officer.

If you attend religious services regularly -- or work as a firefighter, or drive a station wagon -- your insurer might want to cut you a break. In an effort to cherry-pick more-profitable customers, insurers are rolling out new programs targeted to specific groups they believe pose less risk.

People who live within a mile of a U.S. church are less likely to have a car accident than drivers who live more than a mile from a restaurant. Quality Planning Corporation, a San Francisco firm that helps insurance companies price insurance more accurately and fairly, finds a relationship between where a vehicle owner lives and the likelihood that he will be involved in an auto accident.