Carl Phillips

Future Processing in the London Market

Posted by Carl Phillips on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 11:36 am

You may remember that back in November of last year, I blogged about the Future of Central Services processing work that Market Operations had presented to the London Market Group. Since then, the LMG have appointed Tim Carroll, Underwriting Director at Canopius, as the Project Sponsor to provide direction and report to them on the project’s progress. Tim comes with a wealth of experience in both the Companies and Lloyd’s markets, so is ideally suited to spearhead a cross-market initiative.

To quickly recap, the Future of Central Services project will define an optimum processing model for the London market beyond the “Finish What We’ve Started” workstreams. Throughout 2010, various working groups will design and review new ways of processing business that uses modern technology and data standards (ACORD). One of the key goals of the project; to provide insurers with choice in the central services that they utilise, will be at the front of everybody’s minds when designing these processes. The project team will be liaising significantly with the market to seek insurers’ views on whether the provision of services should be lightweight or heavyweight; in other words: to what extent should market infrastructure (e.g. document repositories) and business services (e.g. policy checking) be provided ‘on a one size fits all’ basis? Heavier provision of central services obviously runs contrary to enabling a choice of services and of service providers; therefore we expect the project to strike a balance between maintaining the economies of scale and efficiencies that we currently enjoy for subscription risks and enabling insurers to perform some processing in-house or with a third-party outsourcer. Additionally, we would be keen to hear the extent to which insurers would like to invest in internal infrastructure.

If you would like to share your views on this particular topic, please do not hesitate to contact me. Alternatively, please contact the Project Manager, Simon.Collins@lloyds.com.

I will be updating my blogs with the progress of this project, and the others that Market Operations are involved with, throughout the year, so please check back regularly to be kept informed.

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This entry was posted by Carl Phillips on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 11:36 am and is filed under Market Operations.

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Comments

  1. From Bill Conniff at February 25th, 2010 at 3:31 am


    Carl,

    Many of your blog posts refer to the ACORD “standard” Standards in software are good because they steer participants to a commonality that benefits all. The term standard implies strict adherence, which is often not the case. Strict adherence to ACORD specifications is not as common as the term “Standard” suggests. Most people really mean “guideline” when they refer to a software standard. In the greater XML world, the w3c xml specification is close to a true standard because it defines the behavior of an XML parser. Using an XML parser with an XML document that is not well-formed results in rejection. The document must be fixed or you cannot move forward.

  2. From Carl Phillips at February 25th, 2010 at 4:56 pm


    It is always easier to refer to standards in its strictest sense when only technology is involved – it has to boil down to just “1″s and “0″s at the end of the day.

    That is indeed one component in the ACORD standards: business rules validated by machine codes with specified consequences when the rules are broken, whether we are using XML parser, as we do in the London market; or electronic validated forms (e-forms) used mainly in the US.

    Indisputably the more dynamic part are the business protocols all must adhere to for the common good. Without these there will be no rules to translate into code.

    ACORD standards are global. When applied in a complex specialist market like ours, it’s often more art than science. One should perhaps view it as a recipe rather than a formula!

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