By Chris Newman, Managing Director – Global, ACORD
Two years ago, the ACORD London Advisory Board (LAB) was established to align London Market initiatives with global data standards across the insurance ecosystem. Since its inception, the LAB has been a force for positive change for ACORD members and the greater London insurance community.
The LAB joins together senior leaders from major London Market organizations along with representatives from the world’s largest brokers and carriers to promote industry-wide collaboration and progress. The LAB supports and advises ACORD as we create and deploy services and assets that drive the ongoing effort to modernise the London Market.
As we reflect on our work over the last two years and look ahead to the next, we asked LAB members to share their thoughts about the London Market’s collective successes, challenges, and opportunities going forward.
“If the market players and providers can continue to work together, we can achieve the digitization of the London market – something that has eluded the market for 20 years.
The greatest specific opportunity, from my perspective – and the one that is the hardest to make work for a variety of cultural, pricing history and short-term financial objectives – is satisfying risks that clients cannot find capacity to transfer.”
–Bob James, Market Transformation Director, Lloyd’s
“For the London Market, the most important technology goal is the building of central services that embed modern technology, eliminate London-specific practices, reduce cost, improve process efficiency, enable future-proofing through ongoing upgrades, are highly secure, and can be adopted by scores of diverse firms currently dependent on legacy systems.
ACORD Standards should and will be central to the new central services being developed for the London Market. If the technology for central services can continue to be delivered then ACORD Standards will provide the specification that enables data to flow across numerous firms through diverse systems throughout the insurance lifecycle. The automation of the London Market depends upon data, and that data is framed by ACORD Standards.”
–Patrick Molineux, Managing Director, LIMOSS (London Insurance Market Operations & Strategic Sourcing)
“A combination of the next generation of PPL and the Joint Solution Plan will drive unprecedented digitisation of the London market. We need to ensure that all carriers, brokers and software houses are ready to embrace the change and get the value.
If we can get adoption of ACORD for PPL and the Lloyd’s CDR then we will have a market that can remain relevant, and might even be world-leading. Add to that the opportunity to provide translation to allow the market to move to digital at each firm’s chosen pace, and we may well see more market growth.”
–Louise Day, Chief Operating Officer, IUA (International Underwriting Association)
“Driving digitisation remains the priority for the Lloyd's and London market. Future at Lloyd's has set out its ambitious roadmap to achieving this through Blueprint Two with the delivery of next-generation PPL trading and automated, digital processing services by Xchanging key pillars of this transformation. Data is the common denominator and another key focus, particularly through the work of the LMG's Data Council, led by LMA's Sheila Cameron, which is pushing for the adoption of standardised, high-quality data and agreed process definitions.
Achieving a truly digitised market is at the heart of sustaining our position as the world-leading insurance hub; the continuing collaborative efforts and enthusiastic engagement of carriers, brokers, service providers and other stakeholders will be essential to rising to these challenges.”
–Rob Myers, Operations Director, LMA (Lloyd’s Market Association)
“There is a continuous need to standardize and streamline process and data flow. This is still a topic many industry players struggle with, and remains THE foundation to be ready to connect to the digital ecosystem.
All parties should be able to complete the full end-to-end process by having system capabilities to translate different languages into a common language which can be easily translated to others when necessary. As an example, some of us prefer to use XML, others JSON, for transferring data and we should avoid doing activities partly in one and partly in the other.
We are making good progress on data exchange for accounting and claims information, but there is a major opportunity for growth and innovation when it comes to the placement and digitization of submission data – focusing on the end-to-end value chain.
IMDEP (the Italian Market Data Exchange Platform) is unique and a great example where we created collaboration and engagement across the value chain (insurers, brokers, reinsurers, tech providers) in a market that had not demonstrated that much interest in digitization so far. It empowers the Italian Market with a centralized reinsurance / large commercial message exchange service for any organization with any technical capability, providing an alternative to individual peer-to-peer connections.”
–Suzana Dudaric, Head Operations Specialties, SwiftRe & UKI, Property & Casualty Business Management, Swiss Re Europe S.A.
“Future at Lloyd’s & PPL Next Gen are both the greatest opportunities and the greatest challenges. Both are dependent on broker adoption, which in turn will trigger carrier adoption. The success of the DXC Joint Solution Plan as a part of Future at Lloyd’s will have a big impact.
The increased adoption of PPL has made a Market Placing Platform a ‘must have’ and the discussions on how to leverage benefits from this (or other platforms) are gaining momentum at a senior level in most brokers and carriers.
Offerings such as ADEPT, ACORD Transcriber, and ACORD Converter are now offering practical rather than theoretical solutions. The continued partnership/support for individual and market platforms is essential. If data standards etc. are standardized as far as possible, then there are no barriers (other than possibly costs) to a market participant using a new product.
–David Poole, Head of Process & Project Management, HDI Global Specialty SE - UK
With multiple market-wide initiatives and collaborative projects soon coming to fruition, now is a critical time of change in the London Market. Forward-thinking leaders across the market’s many diverse stakeholders – primary insurers, reinsurers, brokers, vendors, associations, and others – are in a position to address the challenges of modernisation, seize the opportunities, and drive the market toward true transformation.
With the LMG Data Council providing unprecedented cross-market collaboration and bodies like the ACORD London Advisory Board promoting London and international alignment, there is a renewed optimism that the much-needed modernisation of the London Market is imminent.