By: Spiro Skias
As the insurance industry’s definitive marketplace for nearly 400 years, Lloyd’s of London is almost as synonymous with tradition as it was for its reliance on manual, paper-based processes. However, Future at Lloyd’s has embarked on a journey to digitally transform the marketplace by adopting modern insurance technologies.
Globally, insurance companies and brokers rely on Lloyd’s to foster relationships, which, for years, have depended on meeting in person. While other companies thrived in a work-from-home (WFH) environment, the COVID-19 pandemic required Lloyd’s to close its doors for the first time in over 300 years and severely limited the effectiveness of the in-person model in the marketplace, at least for a while.
Apparently, it took a global pandemic to make the entire insurance industry, not just Lloyd’s, realize that established, traditional processes can actually put business at risk. COVID crystallized the idea that having a digital process should never be the “backup” plan. In the case of Lloyd’s, the shutdown of the organization’s storied underwriting room triggered a realization that modernizing this historic marketplace was paramount.
One of the most significant manual pinch-points that shutdowns of the early pandemic highlighted is the marketplace’s lack of functionally rich, data-centric electronic placement platforms. Several placement platforms have since emerged; unfortunately, these platforms predominantly focus on the broker’s risk submission process, often neglecting the insurance company experience.
There are currently over 50 managing agents representing approximately 80 syndicates at Lloyd’s, and each has the daunting challenge of underwriting, pricing, and accepting insurance risks. This typically requires significant effort to rekey submissions into multiple different systems and manual pricing of risks. It is not only time consuming, but highly inefficient – at least until now. Modern insurance technology solutions, like those of Zywave’s Web Connectivity Limited (WCL) and ClarionDoor, Zywave’s most recent acquisition, are introducing a new concept that changes the way in which risks are placed.
WCL’s enabledPlacing platform provides a common interface for placing risk, enabling brokers and insurance company partners to exchange electronic placing and endorsement messages reliably, using any message or document standard or API. Although there are many systems for placing risks, there is no common interface for underwriters. With WCL, underwriters have an aggregated view of all risk submissions that greatly simplifies the placement process.
ClarionDoor’s product distribution solution provides a fully-configurable and flexible platform for automating pricing and streamlining policy issuance and mitigating inefficient manual processes. Carriers can now establish a much faster, more accurate, and efficient workflow for a complete placement process.
Together, Zywave’s WCL and ClarionDoor are well positioned to digitally transform the Lloyd’s market for a whole new experience.
About the Author
Spiro started his career as a software engineer, developing and managing R&D projects for NASA and Department of Defense in the early 2000’s on artificial intelligent flight control systems and data sciences. He transitioned to the insurance industry where he was the product director for CGI’s Ratabase and policy administration system and later joined ClarionDoor where he is responsible for product and corporate level marketing, industry thought leadership, and supporting the product vision. Spiro is a well respected leader in the insurance industry whose articles have been featured in various media outlets including Insurance Innovation Reporter, ITA Pro, and Insurance Business America.