1 September 2010 Insurance

No easy ride

What a difference a decade makes. e-Business has developed by leaps and bounds in the reinsurance and large commercial insurance industry in the last 10 years, and the list of projects continues to expand.

For starters, email has naturally become the dominant channel to exchange business documents. A series of proprietary carrier solutions have gained solid acceptance in the market and a series of e-business initiatives such as the Lloyd’s Exchange, the Qatar Insurance Exchange and the Rueschlikon Initiative are in the pipeline.

It would appear that e-business is now considered an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

However, the next step in the evolution of insurance e-business is likely to be more cumbersome and slower than we might expect.

A company strategist would be forgiven for thinking that all that is needed is to replace stand-alone Internet sites and email with fully integrated electronic processing, gateways, standard XML messaging and hubs.

“A strong industry-wide accepted standard would assist the handling of inter-company data exchange covering the entire life cycle of an offer—from the initial offer via the underwriting to retrocession.”

The trouble is that companies are often reluctant to actively embrace electronic processing due to several in-house hurdles. First, there are the perceived and actual costs of adoption. Then there are uncertainties around the business case and its achievable benefits. Various issues regarding the implementation and usage of e-business solutions remain to be solved. It also seems unclear how the various offerings differentiate, where and how exactly they add value, and what the development roadmap is.

When the market was surveyed about this issue, there were some compelling results, which found that three elements are essential in any e-business project:

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