For the second year in a row, Scyllogis has been a sponsor and participant in the Insurance Day Technology Forum. An annual event which brings together technology providers and delegates from the insurance industry, this day long conference includes presentations and panel discussions on a wide variety of insurance technology topics.

This year’s Forum was big success, with over 300 delegates attending, representing more than 160 companies.

Mr Barnabas Hurst-Bannister,  the chairman of the London Market Group, gave an opening keynote presentation called “Modernisation: No one Said it Would be Easy (Quick or Cheap). He discussed the progress that has been made over the past year in terms of modernisation in the London Market, but emphasised that much more still needs to be done.

Later that morning, Colin Whickman, Director and Co-founder of Scyllogis, participated in a panel discussion on Emerging Insurance Exchanges and Threats to London.  In this discussion, Colin stated that modernising the London Market is vital to maintaining competitiveness with new insurance exchanges emerging around the globe. He pointed out that if new exchanges can leverage technology and provide better pricing and faster claims payments, they will pose a threat to London business. The solution, he emphasised, is the implementation of straight through processing, or STP, where the core data set for all parties in the supply chain, from placement through to settlement, can flow through the chain to all systems without any re-keying.

Although the panel agreed that modernisation is critical, implementing the changes that are required is not always easy. Amoung the challenges faced by many London Market insurers are the many variations in data formats, and the need to integrate the data with legacy and proprietary systems. The question for many businesses is how to make changes without the costs becoming onerous.  According to Colin, there is a way around this. First, some areas may lend themselves more easily to STP. He said, “Accounting and settlement are two areas to consider. The Ruschlikon initiative has focussed on those because they traditionally have less baggage associated with them.” He continues, “The key is to learn to think in a different way, and to make progress in small incremental steps.”

There were many other panel discussions and presentation that took place throughout the day, covering a wide range of topics such as reform of the London Market, the Ruschlikon Initiative, and Solvency II. In addition, there was also a series of presentations on “Tomorrow’s World”, covering the issues that the insurance market will be facing in 5 to 10 years.

All in all, the day was both entertaining and informative, and gave all attendees some great opportunities for networking and exchanging information. It was a big success by any standard.

Scyllogis continues to be a proud sponsor of this event, and we look forward to participating next year.