I just returned from London where we hosted ITC2014 with our partner Insurance Day. We had 280 industry participants and it was a two-day program. I will post some topics over the next few weeks from the event. Download ITCBrochure
Here are a few photos from the event with my team:
Opening ITC
John Bissell
David Smith
Mark Barwick
Roy Laker
Shane McCullough
Audience Interaction
And finally... An Artist's Rendering of the Conversation
Ian Summers, CIO for Aon Risk Solutions & Aon Benfield says: "It is a basic fact of any industry that if there are no clients there is no business. Without someone willing to pay for the thing, no product has any value. It is remarkable, therefore, how much time we in our market, in this newsletter and at our many, many meetings, manage to spend discussing all sorts of aspects of our business and our processes without ever mentioning the one set of people that really matter – our customers. I think we are standing at a pretty important point in the modernisation process.
Read more in the London Market Group newsletter. Download LMG News OCT12PUB
E-accounting success could ensure other London market modernisation initiatives continue to gather momentum. This could impact the markets work in endorsements and placing in particular according to Simon Squires of the Lonodn Market Group as reported by Greg Dobie at Insurance Day. They exchange data in a structured format using standard messages from the industy standards body ACORD. Insurance Day (This is one of many stories that I post about the value of industry standards. All made possible by forward thinking firms that help us create and maintain the standards.)
Press release from the International Underwriting Association reveals big savings for the company market in London. "ACORD Standards herald faster and more efficient transactions." Download Non bureau press release
The Market delivers with ACORD Standards. All these strands come together to form the foundation that is delivering the central LMG vision – a market where the end to end insurance transaction is supported by the exchange of structured, ACORD standard data. Claims; accounting and settlement; and now, increasingly, the placing process are underpinned by electronic information. In the main those new processes are now already capable of supporting every nuance of London market business. Download LMG News Jul12PUB
Here is a copy of the Lloyd's Market Association Viewpoint as well as the Bluffers Guide to Modernisation in the London Market. Viewpoint (November 2011)
No sooner did we leave Fort Lauderdale and the annual awards reception, did we head over to London for the Insurance Day Awards. Insurance Day has 26,000 readers in 67 nations plus 24,000 visits on their website. As you know, we partner with them on the Insurance Technology Congress. held in October of each year.
The BMG Group was awarded the Technological Initiative of the Year for their iPad project in London tonight.
ACORD and Insurance Day have teamed up by combining previously separate technology events in London into a single mega-event. So you now get the best of both worlds. Top Insurance Day programs and access to ACORD experts and a wealth of knowledge on insurance technoloigy including the international data standards.
In many ways, the oldest market in our business can teach all of us lessons. They have taken reform seriously. They understand what "cooperation" really means and they totally get industry standards. After all... they had standards from the beginning. It's uncanny that I still need to explain all of this to non-member carriers today.
For all the challenges that we face in terms of contract certainty and process complexity, the London Market has become a role model in many ways for the rest of the world. They still wrestle with many challenges like everyone else, but the level of committment... as a community... is remarkable. They work through the London Market Group (LMG) on projects and Lloyds has morphed their network (The Exchange) into a London Market service by partnering with other organizations.
Here are a few public reports they published that you may not have seen. Read. Learn.
Download Measuring The Benefits
Stay tuned to this blog and I will tell you what we are doing with other communities in the United States, China, Europe, Australia and South Africa just to name a few. If your trading partner carriers are not members of ACORD and supporting y/our work, give them a call.
Lloyd's held a
trade fair today for suppliers to demonstrate their products that
connect to the Lloyd's Exchange. The Exchange is a network created by
Lloyd's to facilitate messaging traffic between brokers and syndicates. It is now in pilot and all traffic is ACORD Standards compliant.
Other organizations are using the network as well. It is primarily for Placing business at the present time with back office messaging being a future deliverable. We are
doing a series of interviews in London this week with key executives to
provide an update on the pilot and plans for the future. I will post a
link to those videos when final.
The National Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA)
visited the ACORD office tin London today. Keith Savino, hosted the
group to discuss the role of data standards in the London Market
specifically. Pictured are Beth Grossman, Keith Savino, Donna Pile,
Greg Maciag, John Spalding, Robert Page, Ted Besesparis, Len Brevik,
Phil Brown, Roy Laker, Brian Marino, Mark O'Connell. Len Brevik is the
Executive Director of PIA and Robert Page is current President.
We spent five hours together with other invited guests to discuss progress and plans for using ACORD Standards. Our goal is to work more closely with the PIA going forward on advocacy for ACORD Standards. I want to thank Keith Savino and Beth Grossman for arranging this successful meeting. Here is one of the slide decks used by Roy Laker. ACORD PIA London
We pride ourselves on reaching out to members on a regular basis and that includes many markets and geographies. Our meeting at Lloyd's of London last week was important to the ACORD Board of Directors. It provided them with the opportunity to talk to members, identify issues and discuss opportunities to improve ACORD services.
I will share some of the PowerPoint presentations with you and talk about some of the challenges we face in the weeks ahead.
The 2007 Technological Award went to The Insurance Workplace. Standing with me are Warren Gunn, Technical Director, David Edwards, CEO and Brian Moore (former rugby champion). TIW developed an online document management system that enables both brokers and underwriters to participate in the A&S and ECF initiatives in the London Market. TIW is ACORD DRI Standards (Document Repository & Interoperability) compliant.
The London Market likes to celebrate success and they deserve to do so. While ACORD was honored on three separate occasions in the past, I will be pleased to present the Technological Initiative of the Year Award at tonights banquet.
Clem Booth, ACORD Chairman and Member of the Management Board of Allianz joined Richard Ward, Chief Executive of Lloyd's of London and I at a special Advisory Board Meeting in the Old Library at Lloyd's of London. Mr. Ward spoke about the importance of ACORD Standards and Market Reform in his address delivered to key industry leaders.
ACORD has been part of Market Reform in a very meaningful way for a number of years. Dane Douetil (center), Chief Executive of Brit Insurance and Chairman of the MRG (Market Reform Group) with Mike Smith (Lloyd's of London) talk about his tenure at the MRG. Steve Matanle, Chairman & CEO of Marsh Global Markets and a Director of ACORD will replace Douetil in 2008. Here is a video of Mr. Douetil talking about Reform. Douetil Video
Clem Booth (ACORD Chair and Member of the Management Board of Allianz) and I hosted the ACORD London Forum on October 17 and 18 attended by 500 industry participants in Gibson Hall. We held a Forum back in 2005 and the responsiveness for the event continues to increase even though ACORD has now become a well known part of Market Reform.
Dennis Mahoney (Chairman of Aon Global) was our keynote speaker. He spoke about the challenges we face as an industry and the need for better progress in automating the business. He stressed that e-failure will eliminate some players in the future. "They will be taken out" he said "unless they get on with it."
Peter Arbenz (Swiss Re) joined Clem and Dennis on the wrap-up panel on the closing day. The ACORD staff was hard at work in background, answering questions and providing updates. But I love these events because the people on stage are ACORD members and industry observers and they are all talking about Standards and ACORD.
I will be posting more updates on London and you will soon see all the speakers and sessions on the ACORD website.
Sometimes you do not have a choice. Contract Certainty, a major part of Market Reform in London was mandated by the FSA (Financial Services Authority) and it was largely accomplished. Now the question is whether or not organizations would mandate doing business electronically using industry standards.
While ACORD Standards are set and implemented voluntarily by members, there is precedent for mandating data standards in health insurance. Regulators have been known to mandate data formats for filings and private organizations are now talking about it. Lloyd's of London is focusing on process reform and has not ruled out mandating the use of ECF (Electronic Claim File) if members fail to take up the streamlined system. ECF uses the ACORD DRI (Document Repository & Interoperability) Standard.
Many ACORD members make decisions about suppliers (vendors) based on ACORD membership and ACORD Standards. And it is not uncommon to find ACORD compliance as a requirement in RFP's (Requests For Proposals). While everyone likes to believe that managers all understand the economic value of implementing industry standards, it requires committment and change. We are probably looking at a future where trading partners will seek out those that can more easily do business with them electronically and avoid those that do not. In the end, the market itself will make industry standards compulsory.
Julian James, director of worldwide markets at Lloyd's of London will leave Lloyd's at the end of April. He was with Lloyd's for nine years and was responsible for all commercial activities outside the UK, including the management of its 72 trading licences. He will be going to Lockton International, a privately-owned U.S. based insurance brokerage, has grown its international business recently, buying the UK-based international risk services unit of Alexander Forbes. He worked closely with Lord Peter Levine, Chairman of Lloyd's and was very helpful to me in discussions on Asia-Pacific in particular. We wish him all the best.
I was pleased to present the Technological Innovation of the Year award to Crawford & Company (Center) as part of the Insurance Day Annual Awards Dinner at the Grosvenor House in London on December 7. With me is Bill Beaumont (Right).
Bill was a famous Rugby player for England (1975-1982). Pictured to the left during his playing days. I think he was open to the idea of leading ACORD implementation efforts. He has a "don't mess with me" kind of look, although he's a real nice chap. Bill Beaumont
Douglas W. Hubbard: How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business
Gregory A. Maciag: The Business Information Revolution: Making the Case for ACORD Standards
This book was the end result of my writing monthly columns for ten years.
Thomas J. Peters: The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE
David Loshin: The Practitioner's Guide to Data Quality Improvement
Gregory A. Maciag: The Real-Time World:Enabled by ACORD Standards
Thomas L. Friedman: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
David S. Platt: Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It
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