AM Best Upgrades National Guardian Life Insurance Company Credit Ratings to A (Excellent)

National Guardian Life Insurance Company (NGL) is pleased to announce AM Best has upgraded its Financial Strength Rating to A (Excellent) from A- (Excellent) rating effective March 24, 2021. The outlook of these ratings has been revised to stable from positive. This rating reflects the excellent ability of NGL to meet its ongoing insurance policy and contract obligations and further attests to its financial strength.

“Last year NGL finished with capital and surplus reaching historic records. Our strong financial position is the result of generations of employees consistently doing what is right and always putting our policyholders first. This rating both confirms our strength and stability, and gives us confidence to enter new markets so that we can expand our societal impact,” said Knut Olson, NGL President & CEO.

AM Best has also upgraded NGL subsidiary, Commercial Travelers Life Insurance Company, to A (Excellent) rating with stable outlook.

“Despite the challenges NGL faced in 2020 with the pandemic’s impact on sales and claim levels combined with the low interest rate environment, NGL had a solid year from an income perspective. We strengthened our balance sheet by selling blocks of business, updating our investment strategy and managing risk. Through these actions, total adjusted capital has reached $451.8 million with an RBC ratio of 556 percent, the highest level in NGL’s history,” said Nancy Stoddard, NGL Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Actuary.

According to a news release from AM Best, the rating upgrades are driven by continuing improvements in NGL’s balance sheet, including a decline in financial leverage from the pay-down of surplus notes, favorable capital and surplus growth on an absolute and risk-adjusted basis, and a conservative investment portfolio. AM Best also noted that operating earnings remained consistent in 2020 despite the challenges of operating in a pandemic environment.

AM Best is the world’s oldest and most authoritative insurance rating information source. The financial strength rating is based on a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation of a company’s balance sheet strength, operating performance and business profile.

As a longtime leader in the insurance industry, NGL is dedicated to serving policyholders and partners by offering high-quality products that are among the safest and most stable in the industry.

To learn more about NGL’s financial strength and stability visit our website, www.nglic.com. For the latest rating, access www.ambest.com.

About NGL

Established in 1909 National Guardian Life Insurance Company (NGL) is an insurance company headquartered in Madison, Wis. Licensed to do business in 49 states and the District of Columbia, NGL markets preneed and individual life and annuities, as well as group markets products. Information about NGL can be found at www.nglic.com; Facebook: Facebook.com/NGLIC and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/national-guardian-life-insurance-company.

About Commercial Travelers Life Insurance Company

Commercial Travelers Life Insurance Company became a wholly owned, stock subsidiary of National Guardian Life Insurance Company in 2017.

Ratings current as of 03/24/21. National Guardian Life Insurance Company is not affiliated with The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America a/k/a The Guardian or Guardian Life.

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Top OnBase Reseller Honors Earned by Naviant Again in 2021

Media contact:
Jen Hein | jhein@naviant.com

Top OnBase Reseller Honors Earned by Naviant Again in 2021

VERONA, WI, MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, OH, & OREM, UT – March 19, 2021 – Naviant, a top OnBase reseller, was recently honored by Hyland for outstanding partner performance, customer support, and customer growth. Naviant was awarded the Customer Growth Partner of the Year award and the OnBase Diamond Support Award. Naviant was also recognized for achieving Platinum Partner Status year after year.

As a long-time OnBase partner, Naviant has won the OnBase Diamond Support Award 17 years in a row. Naviant believes that the key to customer growth is providing excellent customer support. Naviant is committed to its customers’ success at every stage of the process, from the consultation phase to implementation and ongoing support provided by its Customer Success Team (CST).

“At Naviant, we provide the highest level of service and commitment to our happy customers, and we believe our 96%+ retention rate clearly reflects this dedication,” says Michael Carr, President and CEO at Naviant. “The best-in-class OnBase content services platform has a direct and measurable impact on our clients and helps them work more efficiently with less, and these top honors help set Naviant apart from the other OnBase resellers.”

The Naviant team is dedicated to getting to know each customer’s organization and industry over time. This close relationship helps Naviant to provide tailored, innovative ideas and solutions to drive efficiency even further.

“Our primary focus is on our clients’ growth and sophistication,” said Michael Carr. “Using our technology and process automation expertise, we are committed to helping our customers gain and maintain competitive advantage and reach their digital transformation goals.”

As a long-standing key partner of Hyland Software, Naviant helps organizations operate more efficiently using the OnBase software platform, Hyland RPA, the Hyland Cloud, ABBYY and Brainware intelligent capture platforms, and the Kryon Robotic Process Automation platform. Naviant’s “process-first” approach brings focus to the importance of process improvement prior to implementing best-in-class automation solutions and technology.

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About Naviant

Business processes and solutions that empower better and faster decisions are what we do best. As a nationally recognized intelligent automation solutions integrator and business process consulting organization with over 30 years of experience headquartered in Verona WI, our clients do more with less by streamlining processes and gaining visibility into the information they need to make better decisions. As a long-standing key partner of Hyland, Naviant helps organizations operate more efficiently using OnBase software platform, Brainware intelligent capture platform, the Hyland Cloud, and Hyland RPA platform, all of which are Hyland products, as well as the ABBYY and Kryon Robotic Process Automation platforms. Naviant’s “process-first” approach brings focus to the importance of process improvement prior to implementing best-in-class ECM solutions and technology. Naviant is a top-tier partner for Hyland’s OnBase, a single enterprise information platform for managing content, processes, and cases, that combines ECM, case management, business process management (BPM), records management, compliance, and capture functionality on a single platform. In addition, Naviant also partners with Kryon Systems for Robotics Process Automation (RPA) technology to enable organizations to drive business agility and efficiency by offloading repetitive high-volume work to a digital workforce (aka software robots).  To learn more about Naviant, please visit naviant.com. Process focus. Excellence.

About Hyland

Hyland is a leading content services provider that enables thousands of organizations to deliver better experiences to the people they serve. Find us at Hyland.com.

Ethisphere Announces Old National Bank as One of the 2021 World’s Most Ethical Companies for the 10th Year

Recognition honors those companies who understand the importance of leading, making hard but values-based decisions, and their overall commitment to integrity. 

Evansville, Ind. – February 23, 2021 – Old National Bank has been recognized by Ethisphere, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices, as one of the 2021 World’s Most Ethical Companies. 

Old National has been recognized for 10 consecutive years and is one of only five honorees in the banking industry. In 2021, 135 honorees were recognized spanning 22 countries and 47 industries. 

“The honor of being recognized as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for the 10^th consecutive year is an exceptional milestone,” said Jim Ryan, Old National Chairman & CEO.  “High ethical standards are the foundation of our culture at Old National, and it is a testament to our team members who are committed to act with integrity and transparency as they diligently serve our clients and communities every day.”

“While addressing the tough challenges of 2020, we saw companies lead – above all other institutions – on earning the trust of stakeholders through resilience and a commitment to ethics and integrity,” said Ethisphere CEO, Timothy Erblich. “The World’s Most Ethical Companies honorees continue to demonstrate an unwavering commitment to the highest values and positively impacting the communities they serve. Congratulations to everyone at Old National for earning the World’s Most Ethical Companies designation.”

Ethics & Performance 
According to Ethisphere’s Ethics Index, the publicly listed 2021 World’s Most Ethical Companies honorees outperformed a comparable index of large cap companies by 7.1 percentage points from January 2016 to January 2021.

Methodology & Scoring
Grounded in Ethisphere’s proprietary Ethics Quotient®, the World’s Most Ethical Companies assessment process includes more than 200 questions on culture, environmental and social practices, ethics and compliance activities, governance, diversity and initiatives to support a strong value chain. The process serves as an operating framework to capture and codify the leading practices of organizations across industries and around the globe.

This year, the process was streamlined and question set expanded to gauge how applicants are adapting and responding to the global health pandemic, environmental, social, and governance factors, safety, equity, and inclusion and social justice.

Honorees 

The full list of the 2021 World’s Most Ethical Companies can be found at https://worldsmostethicalcompanies.com/honorees.

ABOUT OLD NATIONAL

Old National Bancorp (NASDAQ: ONB), the holding company of Old National Bank, is the largest bank holding company headquartered in Indiana. With $23 billion in assets, it ranks among the top 100 banking companies in the U.S. and has been recognized as a World’s Most Ethical Company by the Ethisphere Institute for ten consecutive years. Since its founding in Evansville in 1834, Old National Bank has focused on community banking by building long-term, highly valued partnerships and keeping our clients at the center of all we do. This is an approach to business that we call The ONB Way. Today, Old National’s footprint includes Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In addition to providing extensive services in retail and commercial banking, Old National offers comprehensive wealth management, investment and capital market services. For more information and financial data, please visit Investor Relations at oldnational.com.

About the Ethisphere Institute
The Ethisphere® Institute is the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust and business success. Ethisphere has deep expertise in measuring and defining core ethics standards using data-driven insights that help companies enhance corporate character and measure and improve culture. Ethisphere honors superior achievement through its World’s Most Ethical Companies recognition program and provides a community of industry experts with the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA). More information about Ethisphere can be found at: https://ethisphere.com. 

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Media Contacts

Old National Bank Media Contact

Kathy Schoettlin
(812) 465-7269
Kathy.schoettlin@oldnational.com

Ethisphere Media Contact

Clea Nabozny
clea.nabozny@ethisphere.com

Parent Company of Wisconsin Bank & Trust Recognized as a Forbes Best Bank in America for 2021

CONTACT:
Brent Giles
President and CEO
608.203.1224
bgiles@wisconsinbankandtrust.com

Allison Lindorfer
Marketing Specialist
715.781.2665
alindorfer@wisconsinbankandtrust.com

PARENT COMPANY OF WISCONSIN BANK & TRUST RECOGNIZED AS A FORBES BEST BANK IN AMERICA FOR 2021

February 9, 2021 – Madison, WI — Wisconsin Bank & Trust through its parent company, Heartland Financial USA, Inc. (NASDAQ: HTLF), has been named a “Forbes Best Bank 2021.”

In its annual review of the largest publicly traded banks and thrifts, Forbes ranked Heartland 52^nd  among a nationwide group of 100 leading banking organizations with assets ranging from $9 billion to over $2 trillion.

“We are proud to be named among the Best Banks in America for 2021,” said Brent Giles, President and CEO at Wisconsin Bank & Trust. “As a community bank, what sets us apart is our strong commitment to our customers, combined with access to ‘big-bank’ products and services as part of Heartland.”

“The Forbes ranking underscores the benefits of our unique structure—the strength and capabilities of a big bank, combined with the personal touch and local decision-making of a community bank,” Giles said. Wisconsin Bank & Trust offers full-service branches where experts can meet all financial needs throughout the community.

To compile the rankings, Forbes used data collected by SNL Financial through the third quarter of 2020 on the country’s largest publicly traded banks and thrifts. The data covered 10 metrics of financial health: return on average equity; net interest margin; nonperforming loans (NPLs) as a percentage of loans; nonperforming assets as percentage of assets; reserves as a percentage of NPLs; two capital ratios (Tier 1 and risk-based); and leverage ratio. Forbes generated its ranking based on an average of the individual ranks of each metric.

About Wisconsin Bank & Trust

Wisconsin Bank & Trust (WBT), a subsidiary of Heartland Financial USA, Inc., (NASDAQ: HTLF), is a business-focused community bank with assets of more than $1.2 billion. With 13 banking centers and one loan processing office, Wisconsin Bank & Trust serves customers in the Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Sheboygan, Monroe and southwest areas of Wisconsin. WBT offers a wide range of personal and business banking, private client and mortgage lending services. For more information, visit www.wisconsinbankandtrust.com or call 608.203.1214. Wisconsin Bank & Trust is a member of the FDIC and an Equal Housing Lender.

About Heartland Financial USA, Inc.

Heartland Financial USA, Inc. is a $17.9 billion diversified financial services company providing commercial and retail banking, residential mortgage, wealth management, investment services and insurance services.  Heartland currently has more than 130 banking locations in more than 100 communities in Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Texas and Wisconsin.  Additional information about Heartland Financial USA, Inc. is available at www.htlf.com.

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Nordic named a leader in Everest Group’s Healthcare IT Services Specialists PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2021

MADISON, Wis. – Nordic has been named a “Leader” in Everest Group’s Healthcare IT Services Specialists PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2021. The report evaluated the market impact, vision, and capability of 12 healthcare IT consulting firms, and placed Nordic in its top category.

Nordic is positioned highly for its proven ability to deliver effective advisory services that lead healthcare organizations to successful outcomes. In combination, the breadth and depth of Nordic’s advisory services have resulted in significant value for its client partners and in turn, have helped Nordic gain a strong foothold in the market of healthcare IT service providers.

“Being named a Leader by the Everest Group’s PEAK Matrix is a testament to our advisory team’s trusted ability to serve our client partners’ complex needs,” Practice Lead of Advisory Services John Distefano said. “It’s especially humbling to earn this placement coming off a year that presented many new challenges to healthcare organizations. Our team acted and adapted with urgency to support our clients and help them emerge from 2020 stronger and more prepared for the future of care delivery.”

Nordic’s experienced healthcare IT consultants provide advisory services focused on strategy, implementation, performance improvement, and digital health. Its team brings together a unique combination of clinical, operational, and technology perspectives to deliver a holistic solution to each client organization’s specific challenges.

The PEAK Matrix provides an objective, data-driven assessment of service and technology providers based on their overall capability and market impact across different global services markets, classifying them into three categories: Leaders, Major Contenders, and Aspirants. This marks Nordic’s first appearance on a PEAK Matrix assessment.

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About Nordic Consulting

Nordic is a top-rated healthcare consulting firm that guides organizations to a stronger business with better patient outcomes. It provides health IT staffing, advisory consulting, and managed services, leading clients smoothly from strategy through to execution. Founded in 2010 as an EHR staff augmentation firm, Nordic’s solutions have expanded over time to help clients overcome their evolving healthcare-related challenges. Today, Nordic and its family of healthcare consulting companies, Healthtech and Tasman Global, partner with nearly 300 clients across the globe, helping them deliver higher quality care at a lower cost. To learn more, please visit nordicwi.com.