Donated assets will accelerate global insurance industry’s adoption of straight-though processing and real-time data exchange for simple and complex risks
LONDON, UK, April 15th, 2021 - Sequel Business Solutions (Sequel) and ACORD today announced a joint initiative to create expanded data standards to benefit the London Market and the global insurance ecosystem. These standards, which will enable a variety of business activities including placing, underwriting, and distribution, will be based on assets donated by Sequel to the industry through ACORD, the global insurance standards-setting body.
As part of this initiative, Sequel has donated the APIs and transactional use cases of Sequel Rulebook, its award-winning pricing, underwriting and distribution platform for the specialty insurance market. This donation paves the way for commercial and specialty risks to be managed in real time centrally by capacity providers and accessed directly by distribution partners globally via industry-owned standard processes and APIs.
Sequel and ACORD are also collaborating on the creation of a unifying standard for insurance placements, with Sequel donating their proprietary Sequel Unified Risk Transfer framework. While the proliferation of disparate placing systems, exchanges, market initiatives and proprietary APIs in the marketplace has offered choice, it has also created an increasingly complex and fragmented technical environment, leading to growing friction and inefficiency. Organisations are responding by developing their own API strategies to cope with the rising number of distinct systems they must interact with on a daily basis. However, this is unsustainable over the longer term without common agreement on process steps and data elements.
Sequel has engaged with clients, brokers, ACORD, and other solution providers and identified a strong desire within the market for interoperability between proprietary and market systems. This is echoed in the objectives of Lloyd’s Blueprint Two, which outlines the benefits of developing market-wide data standardisation. By simplifying the data transfer process, these new standards will improve ease of use for senders and receivers; foster increased connectivity between brokers, carriers, and other market participants; and accelerate the rollout of new initiatives.
Sequel also recently announced ’The Sequel Six’ collaboration with six market-leading Lloyd’s managing general agents to develop data and application programming interface (API) standards which will form part of the Sequel and ACORD initiative.
Ian Summers, CEO of Sequel Business Solutions, said: “Market-wide data standardisation is essential if London is to move into an era of real-time data exchange and make itself more accessible to international markets. These next-generation standards will make transacting with and within the London Market simpler and more efficient and marks an important step forward in global connectivity. Sequel is fully committed to this initiative and proud to donate its proprietary IP for the greater good of the market. Going forward, all our solutions will recognise these standards.”
The assets donated by Sequel will be incorporated into the ACORD Next-Generation Digital Standards, which enable fine-grained business transactions using emerging technologies throughout the global insurance ecosystem. Market participants can leverage the benefits of the standards either by adopting them as a baseline, or by sending information in their own proprietary formats through gateways such as ADEPT (ACORD Data Exchange Platform & Translator), making it easier for legacy systems to transact.
“Sequel’s donation and collaborative work with ACORD stakeholders will have a transformational impact on end-to-end digital processing for both the London and broader global markets,” said ACORD CEO Bill Pieroni. “This will facilitate enhanced data completeness and quality, as well as business process efficiency across carriers and brokers. With these standards, the industry will be positioned to more fully leverage API-enabled data interoperability for key risks.”
About Sequel
Sequel, a Verisk (Nasdaq:VRSK) business, is a leading insurance and reinsurance software specialist. From its headquarters in London EC2, the company employs talented insurance and technical experts in the UK and Spain who are dedicated to complex commercial and specialty insurance and serving its clients’ businesses.
Sequel delivers a modern, powerful, and integrated suite of software that provides full end-to-end management of all insurance and reinsurance business. As a result, its clients are able to grow and better manage their business through greater efficiency, flexibility, and data governance. For more information, please visit http://www.sequel.com.