Duck Creek in the mix – shaking up the London market tech scene
What are the key ingredients for a competitive edge? Duck Creek Technologies Europe Managing Director Bart Patrick explains why a new Web Connectivity partnership matters for London market carriers.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, or so the saying goes. And the London market technology broth is a spicy one indeed! So why did Duck Creek Technologies Europe enter the mix? What key ingredient do we bring that others don’t?
At the risk of stretching this cooking metaphor to breaking point, typical London market insurance carriers have so much legacy technology systems in their recipe books, that no matter how innovative they want to be, the end result will never be a Michelin star palate pleaser, but it will come at the same price. But for those insurance technology reformers willing to look at their technology recipe through a fresh pair of eyes, opportunity knocks.
Duck Creek makes no secret of its mission to simplify technology architecture for London market carriers. Internationally, we already work with the likes of QBE, Chubb, Aegis and Mapfre – all leading global businesses with a London market presence.
Vital data transfer
Messaging between the Lloyd’s market’s central bureau service and all parties involved takes place when ever any business is transacted at the subscription market, transferring vital data from placement and inception through to the claims settlement process.
Without that messaging function, a London market carrier simply can’t function. Managing these missives faster and more efficiently improves the circulation of the lifeblood of the market. If the competitive advantage isn’t immediately obvious to a carrier, it should be a clear differentiator to the brokers and commercial clients on the other end of that customer service.
Cloud architecture is at the core of our London market message. And a new messaging partnership agreed with Web Connectivity Limited (WCL) represents an important element of our London market push.
The partnership integrates our cloud services with WCL’s messaging capability, which is already used by more than 40 Lloyd’s managing agents as well as company market carriers. Essentially, cloud-based efficiency meets the ability to accept and manage interaction with the centralised architecture at Lloyd’s.
This means users can reduce the costs of running systems for businesses, to increase the speeds at which they they can operate, and to rapidly deploy new products to the market.
Bringing something different to the table
Until now, London carriers have had limited options to put modern systems in place. Old tools have been peddled by a limited pool of providers, not really bringing anything to the mix, and taking a long time to integrate any changes or updates. In my opinion, this creates more of a gloopy soup of tech that doesn’t help the market’s technology evolution.
Duck Creek Technologies Europe is still a relatively new addition to EC3’s technology landscape, coming at a time when a step change is needed to transform old architecture.
We want to broaden the choices on offer to London market carriers, and bring technology to the table that really supports the highly efficient and secure flow of international business into London, integrating changes flexibly and without fuss. By offering SaaS architecture from the cloud, a modern gateway for market messaging, and with more partnerships in the pipeline, the ecosystem on Lime Street is evolving fast. Watch this space!
