Minutes of the IUG Meeting – 21 May 2008
Minutes of the IRIS User Group Meeting
Held at Tokio Marine, Minster Court
21 May 2008
List of Attendees:
Axis(AXS)Jon Downes(JD)
Ecclesiastical(ECL)Tom Hunt(TH)
Ecclesiastical(ECL)Tracy Murden(TM)
Everest(EVR)Graham Titheridge(GT)
Everest(EVR)Jon Bartholomew(JB)
Great Lakes(GLR)Graeme Walker(GW)
Illium(ILL)Jayant Popat(JP)
Imagine(IMG)Robert Smith(RS)
Liberty Mutual(LIB)David Westgate(DW)
Liberty Syndicates(LSM)Shaun Hanson(SH)
Novae(NOV)Nigel Sheppard(NS)
QBE(QBE)Gina Dudeney(GD)
QBE(QBE)Joe Dainty(JDA)
Tokio Marine, London(TOK)Simon Dunn(SD)
XL London(XLR)Stephen Hughes(SHU)
XchangingMark Elvidge(ME)
Richard Clark(RJC)
Sharon White(SW)(Minutes)
Apologies:
ArchBudhi Singh, Elizabeth Fullerton-Rome, John Pagdin
AxisColin Pearson, Ian Holland
Great LakesSue Talbot
IGIBan Pahlawan, Rachel Butler, Waleed Jabsheh
IlliumCarol Budd, Russell Benzies
Liberty MutualRichard Fallon
Liberty SyndicatesDaniel Packman
MomentumMark Edwards
NovaeClive Murray
QBENick Flaherty
River ThamesDavid Grisley
Tokio Marine, LondonSteve Perkins
Tokio Marine, MalaysiaKeith Maruyama
XL BermudaRobert Gillies
XL LondonMargaret Patrick, Peter Sammons
XL SingaporeCaroline Wee
General
NS welcomed everyone to the meeting and advised that he would be acting as Chair today. NS thanked TOK for allowing the IUG to use their boardroom for today’s meeting.
1.Previous Minutes
080430.001 – JDA – System Test Procedures
JD said that he was currently putting together a log with his IT department and would revert to the IUG at the next meeting.
080521.001 JDA
080430.002 – AC – Parallel Data Sets
SH said that this item was now complete and could be removed from the minutes.
080430.003 – ME – IRIS 11.17 iSeries Upgrade Proposal -Documentation
080430.004 – ME – IRIS 11.17 iSeries Cumulative Upgrade - Costs
ME confirmed that both the documentation and costs had been emailed to the IUG on 8May2008.
There were no further comments in relation to the previous minutes and they were therefore agreed as complete.
2.Upgrade Utility
ME outlined the upgrade utility documentation to the IUG and asked if anyone had any questions. GD said that the document mentions six hours for each individual upgrade e.g.7.13 to 8.14 and asked what this was based on. ME said that this was an estimate of the average time that it had taken on previous upgrades and that the actual real time would depend on each client’s database. ME said that the utility was expected to give a time saving of 60%.
DW asked what environment would be used for the testing strategy. ME said that clients would be asked to provide real data from their database and this would be used for testing. ME said that the first customer to undergo this testing will be Imagine.
GD asked how many policy records were on the IMG database. RS said there were at least 10,000. GD said that QBE have 100,000+ policy records on the Lloyd’s side.
NS said that NOV would not benefit from the upgrade utility as they will be on 10.16 at the time they need to upgrade to 11.17. NS said that he had been worried about the cost but as this would only work out at around £2,000 per IUG member he was happy to the work to go ahead, although it would not be of any advantage to NOV.
DW asked if the quotation was a firm price. ME said that it could either be agreed today as a firm price with a 20% premium or it could be done on time and materials. NS said that would take it to around £20,500 (actual £20,563). JD said that he thought it was quite a good offer. NS asked if everyone was in agreement to proceeding at the firm cost with a 20% premium. Everyone present confirmed their agreement.
3.Funding Discussion
NS said that the IUG now needed to consider the funding arrangements. NS said that the IUG could either (a) pay £20,563 for the upgrade utility and refund members 2008 payments in full or (b) pay £20,563 for the upgrade utility and leave the remaining funds to be used as a safeguard for any market initiatives.
DW asked what the process would be if there were any market initiatives. NS said that it would depend on what funds were available. NS said that any initiative would probably not be covered by the funds so a meeting/vote would need to take place to agree further funding.
DW asked if anyone was aware of any forthcoming initiatives. NS said that he had attended a meeting recently where some changes to the deferral scheme had been discussed. NS said that he was not aware whether this was a code change or something more substantial, however it was not confirmed and had been around for some time. GW said that he was aware of this and it had been around for some time. GW said that it was more than a system change and could have quite an impact on GLR. NS said that he was also aware of some change for SCM messages, but this had been around for three years.
GT asked if anything was happening on the accounting and settlement project. RJC said that the plan is to go ahead with the impetus on sorting out the broker side first, so there would not be any developments this year.
JDA said that if funding were to cease, then there would be the risk of members saying that they did not want a particular development and refusing to fund the item. TM said that this had been discussed at the last meeting. JDA said that it would mean a change to the IUG Constitution.
SH said that he felt it would be cleaner to take the funds out.
ME said that the IUG should also note that there is a further invoice to consider in respect of administration, minute taking and IUG accounts; this is currently paid out of the interest budget. NS suggested that the budget remaining be rolled up to £25,000 to cover this.
4.Formal Votes
Some further general discussion around the funding took place and NS said that there were now three options to consider; (a) pay for the fixed price upgrade utility (b) leave in enough funds to cover the fixed price upgrade utility and sufficient funds to cover administration to a maximum of £25,000 and refund the remaining payments or (c) leave three months funding to be used for contingency.
With the exception of QBE and Novae, all members present voted in favour of option (b) above.
A short discussion then took place as to whether any interest should be refunded. It was decided that this would complicate matters and that therefore just the actual payments should be refunded.
ME said that he would arrange for the costs/refunds to be calculated and these would be sent to the Council for approval in due course.
080521.002 ME
5.Summary, Discussion and Next Steps
RJC said that he thought it would make sense to continue to meet quarterly so that the IUG could be updated on XIAP and other relevant items. JDA said that he thought that it was sensible to continue to meet. NS said that the Council should also continue to hold meetings before the full IUG meetings took place. SW to coordinate arrangements for next full IUG meeting.
080521.003 SW
NS said that he was not aware if the Council members had been advised to the IUG for 2008 and they were as follows:
Graeme Walker – Great Lakes
Joe Dainty – QBE
Nigel Sheppard – Novae
Steve Perkins – Tokio Marine
NS said that Constitution allowed for there to be a total of five Council members and there were currently only four members. NS said that if any member was interested in joining the Council then they should feel free to contact him to discuss this.
6.Next Meeting
It was agreed that a further meeting would be held in September 2008 – details to be advised.
7.Any Other Business
ME said that he would like to advise the IUG that he had received notification from two members advising that they would be resigning from the IUG, the members concerned were XL Singapore and Castlewood (River Thames).
There was no further business to discuss and the meeting closed.
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