The news item also trumpeted that Sue Langley, Director, Market Operations & North America – was “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.”

Brokers 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.”

According to the article, “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.”

This press release almost coincided with the publication of a presentation on the Market Reform website by John Bissell, Operations Director at Miller Insurance. Bissell described the reasons for engaging with Market Reform were that it aligns with Miller’s operational strategy by: enhancing client and carrier value; reducing transactional costs and exploiting information in order to innovate. Bissell also pointed out that technology was a key lever in achieving all of that. To Scyllogis, this premise has been self evident for some time now, but it is good to see more and more market practitioners endorsing this view.

For Bissell, the advantages delivered by Market Reform included: standardisation; removal of ‘wait’ times; removal of the re-gurgitation of paper; potential for the removal of re-keying and re-work. Bissell sees Market Reform as a ‘stepping stone’ towards eTrading and ‘straight through’ data processing.

Bissell pointed out good and not so good things about A&S and ECF. A&S is constrained by lots of electronic pictures of paper and the solution is bounded by Xchanging’s legacy systems and internal processes. His view was that A&S could be further improved by maximising data and minimising paper (which is an aim stated by Ms Langley above).

Turning to ECF, Bissell feels that this is constrained by IMR usability, CLASS@Lloyds and the slow pace of some companies to take up. Bissell defined ‘real’ progress as improved usability, segmentation and replacing legacy CLASS systems.

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.”

Bissell also sees ‘ePlacing’ as having the potential to: free up expensive resources, open up new opportunities, allow segmentation of the business, extend trading hours and locations, plus all the other obvious benefits associated with processing messages rather than paper.

Miller are progressing ‘ePlacing’ on a number of fronts including one way message capability being replaced by two way messaging. They believe peer-to-peer is a good place to start – particularly for working with large carriers who lead a lot and as such they are starting two-way pilots with Brit and Catlin. Miller’s longer term plans are to engage with the Lloyd’s Exchange in 2009, so that will no doubt be good news for Sue Langley.

To me, it seems increasingly encouraging that there are ‘frontiersmen’ like AON, Miller, HSBC, Brit and Catlin who recognise the benefits in moving the London Market forward and are prepared to invest in the technology and other means necessary to keep them at the forefront of the market.