Author Archives: EraNova Institute

Showbiz Shows a Better Way to Pay: Insurance Industry Alert issued by EraNova Institute

LOS ANGELES, Calif. /ScoopCloud/ -- Today the EraNova Institute issues a business alert: "Showbiz shows a better way to pay." EraNova's Director and author of the report, Dick Samson, says, "For non-employees in entertainment and insurance, getting the money due you has often been a chore. Now, for the likes of Tom Hanks and Lady Gaga, it's more of a breeze; and soon may be for everyone involved in insurance."

For decades complexity has been a sore spot in both industries, according to the alert. Then in 2011, Mike Hurst and Jason Hiller established Exactuals, LLC in Los Angeles.

Focusing initially on entertainment, their objectives were clear. "We wanted to get rid of the millions of tiny payment checks," says Hurst. "So we built a model to accomplish that and more, saving studios, unions and other entertainment entities a tremendous amount of time and money."

Hurst and Hiller also attacked the issue of fair compensation. "Musicians and composers were losing about $2 billion per year in unpaid royalties," says Hurst. "This was due to irregularities such as confused coding embedded in digital media."

Their solution was PaymentHub, an automated software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. "It's designed to help large enterprises pay thousands of non-employees who are compensated through multiple means such as commissions, royalties, and residuals," says Hiller.

Exactuals soon acquired other technical assets such as R.AI (Royalty Artificial Intelligence), which uses machine learning to track songwriting information and rights.

Then the company went through growth pains that can now profit the insurance industry:
* Raised $20.6 million.
* Used the money for development, trials, and deployment with film and TV studios, unions, music labels, publishers, and payroll companies.
* Secured large industry players like SAG-AFTRA, the union representing film and TV actors and other showbiz professionals worldwide.
* Delivered new efficiency. For example, all of SAG-AFTRA's 160,000 members can now have their residuals deposited directly into their bank accounts.
* Increased visibility and trust by making statements accessible online.

Implications for Insurance

According to an insurance executive who is evaluating payment technology, "Our industry is only marginally better off than entertainment before Exactuals. There are fewer paper checks than there used to be, and some carriers consider themselves technically advanced. But it's a hodgepodge. There's a lack of standardization and grey areas where information gets sidetracked."

"The entertainment industry is living proof that a fully-functional, high-tech digital system really works," the executive continues. "It has the potential to supercharge all complex payments in our $5 trillion industry."

Two steps toward insurance deployment

STEP 1: In August 2018, Exactuals was acquired by RBC's US banking arm, City National Bank, long known as "the bank to the stars." City National provides Exactuals with deep pockets for expansion and potential customers in all industries (including insurance).

STEP2: In September 2018, Exactuals hired finance and insurance veteran Andrew Mauritzen as CFO. According to a company statement, "Mauritzen will now spearhead entry into the insurance market, adapting Exactuals' best-in-class payment and royalty technology to streamline insurance commissions, refunds, and claims payments while establishing partnerships with insurance carriers and brokerages."

Alternatives?

There are many "fintech" and "insurtech" suppliers but no known competitors offering the breadth and depth of Exactuals' payment services for large organizations.

In specialized niches, however, big change appears afoot, Samson reports. In May, 2019, JP Morgan announced acquiring health-care payments firm InstaMed, which automates medical billing in the $3.5 trillion U.S. health-care market. "This deal shows that banks view the fast-changing world of payments as a space they need to be active in."

The full report is available at: https://medium.com/eranova-institute/insurance-industry-alert-showbiz-shows-a-better-way-to-pay-ff1b40f47447

About EraNova Institute:

The EraNova Institute is a small think tank with a big mission: helping selected changemakers implement their solutions faster, ushering in an advanced, sustainable future. Learn more at: https://medium.com/eranova-institute.

Learn more about Exactuals LLC at: https://www.exactuals.com/#home-intro.

Twitter: @Exactuals #EraNovaInstitute #RoyaltyAI #fintech #InsuranceTech #Insurtech

Today the EraNova Institute issued a business alert: "Showbiz shows a better way to pay." EraNova's Director and author of the report, Dick Samson, says, "For non-employees in entertainment and insurance, getting the money due you has often been a chore. Now, for the likes of Tom Hanks and Lady Gaga, it's more of a breeze; and soon may be for everyone involved in insurance."

Related link: https://medium.com/eranova-institute

Report from EraNova Institute: Making Buildings Smart for a Green Future

MOUNTAIN LAKES, N.J. /ScoopCloud/ -- Today the EraNova Institute announces a special report, "In the Cloud, Our Buildings and We Can Fly - Toward a Smart, Green Life." Dick Samson, Director of EraNova and author of the report, says "Buildings need to get smart if society is to get green."

He adds, "But most buildings are too dumb to even start getting smart. They're not even online." His report documents the reason and describes the solution.

"Most buildings aren't yet online because they're bogged down by paper," he explains. "Their critical systems, from electricity and plumbing to heating and air conditioning, still run manually for the most part - by reference to blueprints, diagrams, construction records, maintenance notes, and other industrial-age documents."

Paper persists because "It's a pain to put it all online. There's just too much of it."

Fortunately, new services simplify the process. They enable organizations to bring their buildings' paper documents online quickly and then manage digitally forever after.

The report presents information from a leader in this new industry, California startup SmartCSM ( https://smartcsm.com/ ). "The majority of the world's buildings are managed from documents that are inaccurate, incomplete, disorganized, illegible, or entirely missing," says Craig Caryl, the company's CEO. "These legacy buildings are too backward to get smart except in bits and pieces."

Operating in the cloud, thanks to services like SmartCSM's, changes all that. It offers broad opportunities for saving time and money while reducing accidents and waste.

"For example," says Daniel Scalisi, SmartCSM's Chief Operating Officer, "technicians fix problems faster when they have immediate access to critical data. Productivity increases of 30 percent are common."

Also, "Managing buildings in the cloud is the first step toward the Internet of Things with artificial intelligence, our next electronic revolution," Caryl adds.

Over time, smart buildings could evolve into genius buildings, fostering profound changes in society, according to the report.

For example, future structures could -

* change from bare-bones enclosures to sensitive instruments of human enhancement, increasing our health, happiness, and productivity, and
* share functions with mobile "people-containers" ranging from self-driving cars to self-guided air and space vehicles.

Early adopters include United Airlines, Toyota, Salvation Army, University of Miami, and the City of Manhattan Beach, California.

In addition to SmartCSM, the report references three other startups in the budding industry: Site1001, Akitabox, and PlanGrid. Many additional suppliers, including giants like IBM and Microsoft, may enter the field between now and 2030, according to the report.

The report is available here: https://medium.com/eranova-institute/in-the-cloud-our-buildings-and-we-can-fly-toward-a-smart-green-life-27e4f64146b7

About EraNova Institute:

EraNova is a small think tank with a big mission: helping selected changemakers implement their solutions faster, ushering in the advanced, sustainable future we all want. Information: https://medium.com/eranova-institute

The EraNova Institute today announced a special report, "In the Cloud, Our Buildings and We Can Fly - Toward a Smart, Green Life." Dick Samson, Director of EraNova and author of the report, says "Buildings need to get smart if society is to get green."

Related link: https://medium.com/eranova-institute

Signs of ‘Connected Consciousness’ Detected on Global Scale

MOUNTAIN LAKES, N.J., Sept. 29, 2014 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- Our individual minds, though distinct and uniquely ours, may also join with others in a kind of mental symphony that now and then becomes audible against a prevailing background of static. That's a research conclusion appearing today on the World Future Society's website. Reported by futurist Richard Samson, Director of EraNova Institute, the conclusion is based on 16 years of analysis by the Global Consciousness Project (GCP), based in Princeton, New Jersey.

The research project, led by cognitive psychologist Roger Nelson, began at Princeton University in 1998 and continues as an international consortium with logistical support from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell.

After monitoring more than 480 world events, the article reports, GCP researchers have accumulated strong evidence of some kind of transpersonal mentality that seems to emerge when many people share a common concern or experience. At such times, a global network of devices employing quantum tunneling has found weak but definite signs of coherence arising out of background "noise" or randomness.

Although the evidence has been known by specialists for years, it has grown so strong it now warrants public attention, Samson asserts. "And it comes at a time when the materialistic assumptions of traditional science, particularly physics, are being challenged."

The measured effect, though faint and fickle, is statistically significant to an extremely high degree, according to Nelson and his fellow researchers. It shows up during times of crisis or celebration, such as an earthquake or New Year's Eve, when millions of people focus on the same thing at the same time.

Although far from final, the research suggests that our minds may not be bounded by our heads but somehow extend out into the world and commingle, at least at times. "What we can interpret from our experiments is that we really are interconnected," says Nelson. "Human beings are simply not isolated islands of consciousness."

The report, "Signs of 'Connected Consciousness' Detected on Global Scale," is available now on Samson's World Future Society "Futurist" blog: http://www.wfs.org/blogs/richard-samson/ .

Nelson laid the groundwork for the Global Consciousness Project at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory at Princeton University, established by physicist Robert Jahn. GCP co-developers include Greg Nelson, John Walker, Dean Radin, Paul Bethke, Richard Adams, Peter Bancel, and Rick Berger.

Links:
* Global Consciousness Project (GCP): http://global-mind.org/ .
* Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS): http://www.noetic.org/ .
* The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR): http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/ .
* EraNova Institute: http://www.eranova.com/ .
* Samson's World Future Society blog: http://www.wfs.org/blogs/richard-samson/ .

To view the original version on Send2Press Newswire, visit: https://www.send2press.com/newswire/signs-of-connected-consciousness-detected-on-global-scale-2014-09-0920-001.shtml.

NEWS SOURCE EraNova Institute :: This press release was issued on behalf of the news source (who is solely responsible for its accuracy) by and Copr. © 2014 Send2Press® Newswire, a service of Neotrope®.