All news about AIG is about how it came close to bankruptcy, how the US Treasury had to bail it out to become the majority shareholder at 79.9% and how the vultures are circling to pick up the good bits in case the US Government decide to hold a ‘yard sale’.

As all newspaper editors know, the summer period is usually ‘news light’ and therefore they have to run with ‘dog bites man’ stories. The insurance market is no exception as far as technology developments are concerned, so I thought I would go back over the pond in search of IT trends.

This month I thought I would have a look to find out what the US insurance market view was of what can be considered the same issues as the London Market Reform is attempting to address. From a very interesting article in the July edition of Insurance and Technology I learnt the following:

An interesting news item on the Market Reform website caught my eye. The item informs us that Aon say they have made significant progress with their ambition to transact as much of their business as possible via an electronic platform and, as at the end of May 2008, had traded over 15,000 lines with over 160 markets via Ri3K. Aon made a commitment to review the experience after the 1 January renewal season and to that end asked Watertrace to conduct a full survey, both internally within Aon Re UK and externally with feedback from markets. The report is available from http://www.marketreform.co.uk/News_archive_2008.htm.