Lloyd's market modernization
The program digitizing placement and claims settlement at Lloyd's, whose difficulty is forcing a market of independent brokers to change together.
November 2020: Lloyd's publishes Blueprint Two, which carries the digital overhaul of placement through to claims and technical accounting. The Lloyd's market long placed risks on a paper slip carried from box to box. The method was expensive: an acquisition cost far above that of integrated insurers, and settlement delays policyholders never understood. Modernization took two successive forms. First came a common electronic placing platform, imposed in stages with quantified targets for the share of risks placed digitally. Then a market-wide program covering data, technical accounting and claims settlement. The difficulty lies in the market's structure more than in the technology. Hundreds of independent brokers and syndicates can only move if all move, and each would rather the other paid the cost of going first. The tool used was therefore regulatory compulsion rather than persuasion: the market authority set milestones and operational penalties. For policyholder and analyst alike, it all reads in a single figure, the share of the premium that pays for intermediation rather than for risk. That figure is what the program seeks to lower.
Lloyd's imposed binding quarterly targets from 2018 for the share of risks placed through the common electronic platform, then announced in November 2020 the Blueprint Two program, extending the overhaul to claims handling and market technical accounting.
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