Douglas Shillito
This week, Lloyd's again made the headlines by unveiling its new strategy with a number of transformational initiatives. Lloyd's, with its unique structure and traditional face-to-face relationships, have struggled to get to grips with high trading expenses and now an increasingly changing world.
However, the new strategy follows a growing success with the wider London Market PPL and TOM technology developments, backed by the bigger brokers. The two papers published by Lloyd's only a few days ago on Artificial Intelligence and Robots & Risk, together with the enthusiasm of the Lloyd's Market Association for digitisation and the recent issue of a view on the Claims Workforce of the Future indicate future direction. The global market is changing through continually development and dispersal of the internet and mobile communications, and emerging technologies are going to play a major part in the implementation of the new strategy.
Asia Pacific presents an opportunity and a threat. Ping An are now regarded as a technology leader as much as an insurer, and this week, Samsung Fire and Marine became the latest Asian investor by taking a stake in Canopius, who also opened an office in Sydney. The launch of Stephen Catlin's Convex Group specialty (re)insurer to trade in Bermuda and London emphasized the intention to achieve competitive expense ratios. Clearly, Lloyd's unique distribution and delegation responsibilities and processing will come under close review - the larger brokers have been diversifying for some time and have generally received the nod from a recent FCA review on their methods of working. All told, strategic transformation has now become a necessity for Lloyd's with worldwide distribution, decision making and streamlined processing to be enabled by the increasing pace of technology. This time, the market mindset might just be ready.
Meanwhile, the FCA called for feedback on its proposed review of the financial advice market, and the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) relaunched its corporate Chartered proposition. The ABI reported a large quarterly drop in the cost of UK motor insurance to a two-year low.
Atticus reported that 14 global insurance carriers were now licensing its DQPro data quality management software, and RMS updated on Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and US. Sapiens solutions were chosen by Sweden-based Folksam, and King Wai Insurance following its acquisition of QBE's Thailand P&C portfolio. US-based Rockford Mutual successfully implemented Guidewire InsuranceNow, a core component of Guidewire InsurancePlatform via Guidewire Cloud.
Beazley is partnering with other Lloyd's insurers to offer a unique and flexible solution to reputational risk, whilst SCOR is taking another step forward in protecting the climate and promoting energy transition. First quarter reports included AXA, China Life, Chubb, CNA, Ping An, St James's Place, Arch Capital, Argo, Berkshire Hathaway, Fairfax Financial, Lancashire, Markel, QIC, Swiss Re and Willis Towers Watson. There was a senior appointment at Willis Towers Watson.
Full articles on the above topics may be found on the Insurance Newslink and Financial Newslink global trends database services at www.onlystrategic.com.