‘Londonisms’ must go if the London Market is to compete

Commercial lines insurers must embrace the same levels of automation prevalent in personal lines, particularly within the London Market if it is to compete with other platforms globally, Patrick Molineux, general manager of insurance at CSC, told Baden-Baden Today.

“Other hubs around the world, such as Singapore, are using advanced using technology platforms. If London isn’t up there with the best of those, the most technologically advanced and sophisticated of those platforms, it will lose business to other centres,” Molineux said.

The US-based IT services company CSC, which acquired Xchanging in May 2016, laid out its new ‘automated’ IT offerings for the London commercial insurance market at its ‘Art of Transformation’ event in mid-October.

At the event, CSC presented its vision for a global digital insurance marketplace (GDIM), setting its direction for delivering standardised software as a service, infrastructure provided on a pay-as-you-use basis, widespread adoption of standard messaging and continual further automation of business process services.

“It has long been the case that in London, where global players are operating, that those companies are looking for global capabilities and global solutions. It’s no longer acceptable for London to operate in a way that is different from everyone else,” he said.

CSC’s multi-year plan aims to transform central services through the use of technology, and to remove London-specific back office processes, known as ‘Londonisms’, where possible.

“The city has operated in a very ‘London’ way in the past, and that’s been fine for centuries. But with the creation of a global commercial and specialty industry, it is no longer acceptable.”

Molineux says despite CSC’s having some 450 customers there, the London Market has adopted technology at a slower pace than other hubs.

“That’s not because those of us operating in the London Market are Luddites,” he explained. “It’s because the market is serving a huge range of different types of risk, and therefore the technology solutions required are that much more sophisticated and complex to cope with those risks and the complexity of the value chain.”

Molineux suggested it’s a lot easier in personal lines, such as motor or home insurance, to drive an end-to-end digital solution than in more complex arenas such as specialty and commercial risks.

One example of CSC’s new products is TreatyCloud, a cloud-based product that aims to provide a more transparent process for agreeing proportional treaty statements.

“TreatyCloud is a great case in point—we are essentially building digital capabilities that are more granular, can be consumed quickly, and relatively inexpensively, that deliver the full digital stack,” he concluded.