Brokers are now ‘live’ on the Insurers Market Repository.
A quiet revolution is underway at Lloyd’s. Brokers and managing agents are taking advantage of new electronic market infrastructure to streamline transactions, lowering their costs and at the same time improving the quality of service to their clients.
Sue Langley, Director, Market Operations & North America – who is driving a fast moving programme of change in the market – has succeeded in ramping up usage of electronic claims files so that virtually all brokers are now ‘live’ on the Insurers Market Repository (IMR).
“We’re pushing at an open door, with just 20% of total claims volume still to bring online,” Langley told lloyds.com recently. “We are 100% there with the ‘business as usual’ claims and brokers and managing agents are starting to tackle their legacy claims now.”
Getting to grips with legacy systemsBrokers and managing agents are deciding which documents to scan into the system by prioritising the mostly long term, complex claims from policies that were written before the implementation of electronic claims files (ECF) in 2006.
“Brokers are really getting to grips with their paper-based legacy business because they don’t want to continue running with two systems,” Ms Langley explains. “They want to process as much as they can electronically to reduce their own costs and at the same time increase the speed of payment to their clients.”
There’s a similar success story to report in Accounting and Settlement (A&S) processing, with effectively all paper submissions eliminated from the system and replaced by scanned electronic information.
“Brokers have done a great job here,” Langley says. “And the next key stage in building an efficient A&S process is to replace document scans with a standardised electronic financial message.”
Testing resolveA stiffer test of managing agents’ resolve comes in the shape of a Lloyd’s project to achieve straight through processing of the reporting information that the Corporation must collect.
Regulatory, tax, performance and other data is currently made available as a by-product of the processing carried out by Xchanging, the back-office outsource company.
But Langley is directing a project that will allow Lloyd’s market players more flexibility in how they collect and report information, and at the same time end any unnecessary reporting.
Goals and processesLloyd’s objective is to make reporting less onerous for its managing agents and brokers and to give them more choice about how they send the information, Langley says.
But first, Langley’s team is conducting an audit of the information it currently collects from the market. It was a monumental task.
“We have identified around 10,000 pieces of information that are currently captured: now we need to reduce that down to the pieces we really need,” she says. “Then we can start thinking about the best ways of collecting it.”
“One size does not fit all and we want to make sure that companies can choose to continue using Xchanging or can send their data direct to us if they want to,” Langley explains. “Ultimately, we want to be able to give all Lloyd’s market players a handbook that outlines the format for companies doing it themselves – or the route through Xchanging – without incurring extra cost either way.”
Lloyd's exchange
A final piece in Lloyd’s electronic jigsaw is the installation of Lloyd’s Exchange, what Langley describes as a ‘virtual room’. The idea is to put in place a simple messaging exchange that allows all Lloyd’s participants to connect with one another for minimal investment.
Information to do with simple risks or endorsements will be sent in the ACORD standard message format and the Exchange would link to established networks such as RI3K, as well as Lloyd’s insurers’ and brokers’ own systems, if they have them.
ACORD is the thread running through all the projects as Lloyd’s strives to deliver clear information standards for an electronic infrastructure that supports placements, claims, and accounting and settlement transactions.
“Ultimately these business change projects are all about improving service to insureds and lowering the cost of doing business at Lloyd’s, for brokers and managing agents,” Langley says. “And to achieve that, everyone needs to be talking the same electronic language.”
