Pan-American Life Insurance Group Names Industry Veteran Bruce Parker Senior Vice President Global Life Insurance

Pan-American Life Insurance Group (PALIG), a leading provider of insurance and financial services, announced today the appointment of Bruce Parker as Senior Vice President Global Life Insurance.

Reporting to Chairman, President and CEO, Jose S. Suquet, Parker will be responsible for all Individual Life insurance business in Latin America; will lead as Chairman of Pan-American International Insurance Corporation (PAIIC) and Pan-American Assurance Company International, Inc. (PAACII) – PALIG’s International Dollar businesses; and developing the Life strategy for the U.S. Hispanic market. Additionally, he will be a member of both the Executive Management and Senior Management Committees.

“With a proven record of success in senior leadership positions demanding effective business strategies and market-focus, Bruce is the perfect choice to drive our Life business,” said Suquet. “I look forward to working with Bruce to strengthen our Life brand in Latin America and to enhance our U.S. Hispanic Life strategy, while exploring opportunities for new ventures and new markets.”

Parker is the former President, CEO and Chairman of Old Mutual US Life and held leadership responsibilities for several of its subsidiaries. As head of Old Mutual US Life, he oversaw $19.3 billion in assets. Most notably, his leadership of the retail business strategy development raised the brand visibility and extended the company’s domestic market reach. Parker was responsible for the strategic direction on the affluent and mass market Baby Boomer population, the U.S. Hispanic market and the affluent international markets, growing revenues from $5 billion to more than $8.2 billion in two years.

Prior to Old Mutual, Parker was Senior Vice President of Distribution for Jefferson Pilot Financial, where he led the design and implementation of their Premier Partner Strategy, growing revenue by 50 percent in three years working with independent agents and marketing organizations.

Parker earned a BA in Economics from the State University of New York at Oswego and a MS in Management from The American College. He also holds a Leadership Certificate from Cornell University. Parker is a former Board member of LIMRA International, current Trustee of The American College Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania and current Trustee of Mt. Pisgah Christian School in Johns Creek, Georgia. Parker will be relocating to New Orleans, LA.

About Pan-American Life

The Pan-American Life Insurance Group is a leading provider of insurance and financial services serving nearly half a million customers throughout the Americas. New Orleans-based

Pan-American Life Insurance Company, the Group’s flagship insurance company member, has been in business since 1911, employing more than 700 worldwide, providing top-rated life and health insurance, worksite benefits and financial services in 47 states, the District of Columbia (DC) and Puerto Rico. Its international operations, offering individual and group life and health insurance throughout Latin America, includes affiliates in Panama, Guatemala, Cayman Islands and Colombia, and branch offices in Ecuador, El Salvador and Honduras. For more information, visit the

Call for Position Papers: Electronic Markets – The International Journal on Networked Business

Electronic Markets is a quarterly journal edited at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and the University of Leipzig, Germany, and published by Springer Verlag. First published in 1991, EM was the first journal to report on the developments and trends in electronic commerce as well as the policies, system concepts, methodologies, impacts, and cultural changes related to this rapidly evolving field. As such the journal embraces the entire range of electronic “market” issues - covering not just transactions but also the wider process of business collaboration as e. g. information, negotiation, trust, risk-taking, customer relationships, buyers finding sellers, sellers finding customers, electronic services.

We invite our colleagues to submit a proposal for a position paper. Such papers will be somewhat shorter in length (about 6500 words) than regular research paper submissions. Position papers should be well developed, thought-through and articulated to address emergment, controversial, even paradoxical issues. Ideally, such papers should develop rigorous evidence-based arguments, yet rely on scholarly thought and logic. Accordingly, position papers should offer novel and fresh perspectives, potentially open new areas of discourse, or possibly even resolve unsettled research questions and issues important to electronic markets and networked business. Authors (with a well established reputation from academia, industry or government) should have a profound knowledge of the area they write about.

A well-known example for a position paper is Carr, Nicholas G. (2003): IT Doesn’t Matter, in: Harvard Business Review, Vol. 81, No. 5, pp. 41-49.

A second very good example is the following: George, Joey F.; Valacich, Joseph S.; Valor, Josep (2005): Does Information Systems Still Matter? Lessons for a Maturing Discipline, in: Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 219-232.

All proposals will be handled by our online submission system (see http://www.electronicmarkets.org/authors/submission). After a first screening submitted proposals authors will be invited to submit a final version of their paper. All papers received will be double-blind reviewed by at least two Associate Editors of EM and, if necessary, well-established peers with expertise on the paper’s topic. Submissions should conform to Electronic Markets’ publication standards (see http://www.electronicmarkets.org/authors). A final acceptance decision will be made by the Editor-in-Chief.

Executive Editor Report 2009 Submission Figures 2009

Since starting with the publishing with Springer in May 2008 we have been using an electronic manuscript submission system. Submissions about Focus Theme Section, as well as a General Research Section have been handled by the online submission system. As from Volume 19 we decided that the submissions for the general research section would not be assigned to a specific issue but that the accepted submissions would be published in the next following issue.

The number of all submissions from May 2008 until now totaled 90. Hence the number of submissions in this period has increased by 3 submissions from 2008 (87). The submitted papers in 2008 were 57 and in 2009 were 33. Whereas we received 5 submissions for focus theme ‘Bled Conference’ (publication in 19-1), 6 submissions for focus theme ‘Electronic Customer Relationship Management’ (publication in 19-2), 9 submissions for the focus theme ‘Internet of Things’ (publication in 19-3) and 13 submissions for focus theme ‘E-Collaboration an Communication Systems’ (publication in 19-4). For the general research section we received 57 submissions.

Electronic Markets Reviewing Matters

All submissions for both sections go through a strict and thorough double blind review process thus being anonymous and confidential for authors as well as reviewers. At least two peers out of our community – in many cases three - prepare a detailed review for every submission. It’s our foremost aim to publish only high quality research papers. As a result of the thorough review process we accept 21% on average of all submissions for publication. For the focus theme and general research section we have the following acceptance rates:

Focus Themes
19-1 acceptance rate 40%
19-2 acceptance rate 33%
19-3 acceptance rate 44%
Vol. 19 (1-3) acceptance rate 40%
General Research acceptance rate 12%

Figure 4 shows the acceptance rates from Vol. 16 to Vol. 19 (all details without consideration of Vol. 19-4).

The acceptance rate for the general research section decreased from 16% to 12% and the acceptance rate for focus theme section decreased from 63% to 40%. That means the general acceptance rate decreased also. However, more submissions about focus theme sections have reached the quality requirements to be published. Because the journal’s aim is to serve as an outlet for research in emerging areas and thus to contribute to its further development but also has high quality expectations the respective decisions whether to accept a paper for publication or not are frequently complex and require extensive discussions until a final decision can be made. Overall we hope that the published papers meet the expectations of our readers and serve their needs.

article source:  http://www.electronicmarkets.org/news/messages/Executive-Editor-Report-2009

US Patent 6032857 - Electronic money system

1. An electronic money system using IC cards for transferring electronic money by communication of a signal between said IC cards, comprising:said IC cards having a processor and first memory for storing operations to be performed by said processor in transferring electronic money, wherein said first memory stores money data values to maintain a record of money transfers between said IC cards, said money transfers between said IC cards including a deposit transfer in which money is received from one said IC card and stored in said first memory of another said IC card and a payment transaction in which electronic money stored in said first memory of said another IC card is transferred to any other one of said IC cards; andsaid IC cards having a second memory for storing information details associated with each said payment transaction.2. An electronic money system according to claim 1, wherein second memory stores said information details that further include at least one of a price, date and time for each said payment transaction.3. An electronic money system according to claim 2, wherein said second memory stores said information details that further include at least one of details relating to identifying a commodity that is part of said payment transaction, a quantity of the identified commodity and supplier identification information for the identified commodity.4. An electronic money system according to claim 1, further including said first memory storing transaction data related to each transfer of electronic money and said second memory storing said information details, said processor using said transaction data in said first memory as an index.5. An electronic money system using IC cards for transferring electronic money by communication of a signal between said IC cards, comprising:said IC cards having processor means and first memory means for storing operations to be performed by said processor in transferring electronic money, wherein said first memory stores money data values that record money transfers between said IC cards, said money transfers between said IC cards including deposit transfers in which money is received from one said IC card and stored in said first memory means of another said IC card and payment transactions in which electronic money stored in said first memory of said another IC card is transferred to any other one of said IC cards; and
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said IC cards having second memory means for storing information details associated with each of said payment transactions.6. An electronic money system according to claim 1, wherein second memory means for storing said information details further stores at least one of a price, date and time for each said payment transaction.7. An electronic money system according to claim 2, wherein second memory means for storing said information details further stores at least one of details relating to identifying a commodity that is part of said payment transaction, a quantity of the identified commodity and supplier identification information for the identified commodity.8. An electronic money system according to claim 1, further including said first memory means storing transaction data related to each transfer of electronic money and said second memory means storing said information details, said processor using said transaction data in said first memory means as an index.9. A method for recording expenses in an electronic money system using IC cards having a processor for transferring electronic money by communication of a signal between said IC cards, comprising:recording in a first memory of said IC cards money data values to maintain a record of money transfers between said IC cards, said money transfers between said IC cards including a deposit transfer in which money is received from one said IC card and stored in said first memory of another said IC card and a payment transaction in which electronic money stored in said first memory of said another IC card is transferred to any other one of said IC cards; and further, using said record of money transfers as an index, storing in a second memory information details associated with each said payment transaction that includes at least one of a price, date and time for each said payment transaction; andreading from said second memory and processing said information details with a personal computer with a program for managing expenses.


article source: http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6032857/claims.html