Leap of Faith: what a difference a year makes

It’s now 12 months since e-Endorsements was launched and I'm still fascinated at how perceptions within the market have changed during that time. Whilst participating underwriters and brokers were supportive at its inception, it was still very much a 'leap of faith'. Would it work? Would counter-parties respond electronically? Would it provide benefits? And of course, would it be sustainable?

A year on and this leap of faith has been rewarded with over 500,000 ACORD messages being sent as part of e-Endorsements (which translates to about 2,500 risk endorsements per month). More importantly, as a collective, the market is now seeing the real benefits of this initiative.

I have blogged before on what these benefits are. Brokers and clients are benefiting from same-day endorsement turnaround and an increase in capacity. Where the carrier is a non- agreement party, they are benefiting from the ability to update exposure at point of bind, to start credit control process at point of bind and to keep claim files up to date.
 
As the months have rolled by, I've been particularly pleased to see the shift in perception of the project within the market as these benefits have emerged. One managing agent I saw at the beginning of the pilot was supportive but perhaps a little sceptical having borne the scars of previous similar initiatives. When I met with them recently, they were positively enthused about the benefits they are now enjoying.

The lesson is, perhaps, that with a market consisting of 250 or so firms that are so inter-connected, the benefits case for a single firm doesn’t always stack up. Instead, a 'leap of faith' approach is sometimes necessary to reap the collective market-wide benefits. For me, it is not just coincidence that this leap of faith has been necessary for ECF, A&S repository and The Exchange - all of which have yielded their ascribed benefits.

I have to hold my hands up here. In 2004 I didn’t think there would be sufficient value in the A&S Repository beyond removing the van and its cargo of paper. But this initiative (and that leap of faith!) enabled Xchanging about five years later to reduce their service levels on premium processing by two days (another of those unseen benefits). The Premium Payment Working Party estimated this was worth many £100,000s to the collective bottom line for carriers.

Comments

No comments