Eighty-two per cent of underwriters say there is a high level of commitment to reforming Lloyd’s market business processes, according to a news item on the Lloyd’s web site – see lloyds_underwriters_back_market_reform.htm for full article.
The findings, published in Lloyd’s fourth annual underwriting survey, come after updated figures from the Market Reform Group (MRG) released last month showed the London market had made significant progress in meeting its goal of reforming business processes.

 Rolf Tolle, Lloyd’s Director of Franchise Performance said:
“Encouragingly, at a time when Lloyd’s is focussing on market reform, the vast majority of underwriters remain completely committed to this process. Priorities for the industry in 2008 must be to continue to closely manage the cycle and push through reform in the market.”

Readers should be well aware of Scyllogis’ belief that this reform route is essential for the market to compete in a rapidly changing environment. Consequently, we were pleased (and somewhat surprised, to be honest) to read this press release.

The reason for surprise was I always thought that underwriters would be the last to be dragged kicking and screaming into the electronic trading world; but apparently not. I do think it would be good to understand the survey results in more detail though; I read the survey and I am no clearer on what this is actually telling us. When 82% of underwriters say there is a high level of commitment to reforming Lloyd’s market business processes, what does this actually mean? Do 82% of underwriters themselves have a high level of commitment, or do 82% of them think that there is generally a high level of commitment in the market? Two different perspectives I think.

Also, what does ‘high level of commitment’ mean? It could be some ‘Yes Ministerism’ used to appear to lend support, but in reality committing nothing. I suspect that most people have a high level of commitment to reducing global warming, but I bet that most are not prepared to make personal sacrifices to achieve it.

I also wonder what people understand by market reform? I think we need a more detailed survey focussing on the tangible actions being undertaken by people, rather than platitudinous opinions, which don’t really give us a picture about how the market is really embracing reform.

As I mentioned in a previous piece, 65% of attendees at the last London ACORD Forum were from IT and the majority of those were from suppliers. Does this fact question the Lloyd’s survey, or does it too tell us nothing? Figures that are more tangible are those recently announced by Lloyd’s: that electronic claims filing use had increased to 90% by the end of Q1 2008, up from 30% at the start of last year, for in-scope claims. It said that a majority of accounting and settlement original premium submissions were now taking place electronically. From the beginning of this month the vast majority of original premium submissions are to be processed electronically; that is the encouraging tangible news we need..

Better questions on a survey would be: what has your organization actually done up to now to embrace market reform? What is planned for 2008, where planned means signed off budget or running projects? In some small way we will kick off the process with this month’s survey.