Sometimes history is worth repeating
Duck Creek Technologies Europe is creating a unified platform that harnesses the collaborative spirit that built the London market, while cutting down on expense and inefficiency.
In this article, I’d like to introduce our Senior Software Architect Nic Daniau and UK and Ireland Product Manager Ellen Kay, who shine the spotlight on progress in the London Market so far.
Nic and Ellen write:
The number of international insurers wanting to operate in the London market has risen in recent years. Unfortunately, so has the associated cost and complexity of doing business in this global specialist insurance hub. Access to the world’s leading (re)insurance centre should come without the attendant inefficiencies that Lloyd’s and the London market have been grappling with, characterised by headline attempts to reduce a cumbersome 40% expense ratio.
The collaborative spirit that brought together insurers at Lloyd’s three centuries ago is an enduring strength of London’s specialty market. The concentration of professional talent for understanding, placing and underwriting complex risks built up over the last 330 years remains a winning advantage on Lime Street. We need to harness the same collaborative spirit on a technological front, to solve the problem at hand with pragmatic and cost-effective ideas.
The Lloyd’s subscription market model has provided strength, but it also poses a unique challenge for finding solutions that provide efficiency. Technology projects, such as electronic placement are progressing, thanks in no small part to the fact that Lloyd’s has mandated their adoption, but the fact remains that not everybody is running together or at the same pace.
Reliance on paper
In practice, brokers are still relying too much on paper and carrying around bulky slipcases full of vital information, while carriers may also be using as many as a dozen software systems to transact business with counterparties in various lines of business. The results, especially when added to the demands of regulatory and reporting challenges, can be time consuming at the very least, and chaotic at worst.
Understanding the power of shared resources could be crucial to finding the efficiency that’s been lacking. We’re collaborating and developing a pragmatic solution for global insurers that want to find a simpler way to transact business in London, stripping away much of the unwanted cost that comes with having to use so many disparate systems and processes all at once.
An exciting challenge
It’s a complex challenge – and certainly an exciting one for us to solve. The key is to provide a single-entry point to manage the maelstrom of systems and processes, utilising the power of an open platform and a connected ecosystem.
What’s been missing so far is an end-to-end solution to access the market’s myriad systems via one platform. We think that such a platform would streamline market access, cut out duplicative data entry and provide the sort of efficiency that could well make a dent in that troublesome 40% market-wide expense ratio.
Our idea is to create a new unified platform for our clients to achieve this, working as software as a service (SaaS) in partnership with Web Connectivity. We see many advantages of using the Duck Creek solution over and above competing platforms in this way – not least combining the universal configurability and scalability afforded by SaaS with the Web Connectivity structured data gateway solution, complying with internationally agreed ACORD data standards.
The technical collaboration necessary to achieve this means that this platform will need to work hand in hand with a plethora of different systems. It will need to provide a gateway to interact with electronic placing platforms, Lloyd’s central services, and various different software platforms used by insurance businesses to transact London market business.
Working with the market
The more systems that a shared gateway on Duck Creek can support and provide interoperability with the better. We know this will help our global customers that want to transact business in London, and we want you to know that we’re working on it.
Lloyd’s success is built on a history of shared knowledge and resources. Here at Duck Creek we feel that sometimes history is worth repeating. That’s why we’ve partnered with Web Connectivity to make universal London market access via one platform a reality in 2019.
