Accord Message Meeting – 10 July 2007 at 10am
Present:
Aon – Ian Summers
Axis - Ian Holland; Jon Downes
Ecclesiastical - Tracy Murden;Tom Hunt
Everest - Jon Bartholomew
Illium/HCC - Jayant Popat
Liberty Mutual - Tim Riley; Richard Fallon;Richard Moonie
Novae - Nigel Sheppard
St Paul - Denise Wood
Tokio Marine - Simon Dunn
Tokio Marine - Steve Perkins
Xchanging; Laurie Cotter, Mick Hobbs,Mike Hicks, Daryl Yeats,Alan Chisham
Apologies
Xl London - Peter Sammons
QBE - Gina Dudeney
QBE - Nick Flaherty
Liberty Mutual - David Westgate
Great Lakes - Graeme Walker
Everest - Graham Titheridge
IGI, Jordan
Liberty Syndicates - Kim Groothuis
Novae - Clive Murray
QBE - John Taylor
St Paul - Andy Holman
St Paul - Michelle Hoey
Tokio Marine, Malaysia
XL Bermuda
XL Singapore
Axis - Colin Pearson
Castlewood - David Grisley
Illium - Russel Benzies
Liberty Syndicates - Stuart Cleverley
Momentum - Mark Edwards
HIH/Paragon - John Mairs
Mick Hobbs (MOH) welcomed everyone to the meeting and introduced Ian Summers (IS) as the guest speaker.
Aon e-Processing and Market Reform
Ian Summers presented Aon’s three year London Market reform strategy; including an overview of the market and Aon’s vision of the future.
Acord Message Overview
Mike Hicks (MH) presented an overview of the current status of Acord messaging and key delivery dates.
Acord Message Viewer
Daryl Yeats (DY) summarised the current position with respect to the IUG Acord message viewer development as:
Business Requirement was signed off by the IUG 08/06/07, the Functional Specification is underway and is scheduled to be sent to the IUG w/e 20/07/07, a demonstration of the functionality is planned for early September and currently, the development is scheduled to be completed early October.
Ian Holland (IH) and Nigel Sheppard (NS) asked when the development would be available to IUG members.
DY answered that as the development is ‘stand alone’ it will not be tied to a specific IRIS release and therefore could be made available to any companieswishing to install it, on completion of the development.
Tom Hunt (TH) asked who was paying for the development and DYexplained that the development was being funded by the IUG.
MOH noted that Xchanging were considering the use of Web Connectivity in conjunction with its Acord messaging developments as this would provide a better basis for future developments with additional functionality. There would therefore be infrastructure and third party costs in addition to the software development costs.
IH asked what the impact of this additional data would be on the IRIS database.MH explained that the initial development was designed to take the Acord phase 1 ‘skinny’ placing message data into a separate database, not into the main IRIS database, as it was decided by the Acord subgroup that this would pave the way for future developments without the requirement to wait until there was sufficient data in the message to populate all of the required fields on an IRIS policy.IS noted that number of fields populated on the phase 1 placing message had initially been kept to a minim to allow the strategy to move forward under suitable timeframes. This also gave the market the opportunity to provide feedback as to which fields are required to be populated and the cost benefits of doing so. Aon were therefore looking for feedback from forums, such as the IUG, to provide feedback as to what data that they saw as key.
IH asked what the strategy was for Genius customers. MOH stated that Xchanging had been in correspondence with Genius customers regarding the initiation of a similar development to that commissioned by the IUG. To date feedback had only been received from four or five customers. MOH suggested that Xchanging propose to interested Genius customers that the IUG development may be used as starting point for any Genius development. Those present agreed with this initiative.
Open Forum
IH asked if Xchanging were now fully integrated and working together as one company. MOH said that there had been a number of realignment programs over the past six months and that Xchanging were now well on the way to integrating of all aspects of the business.
IH stated that he felt that Xchanging needs to consider the impact of the additional data flowing through the market over the next three years and the impact of this on Xchanging software systems. He felt that Xchanging’s central role in the market positioned them well to do this.
IH raised an issue regarding transaction processing and data types, giving a specific example of profit commissions being processed as return premiums and its impact on electronic data flows. MOH said that Xchanging would investigate this issue.