Outsourcing: Has the pendulum swung too far?
We're all under pressure to move 'faster, quicker, better'. But this is only achievable if you've got your fundamentals in place.To gain the full benefits of cloud migration, the fundamentals of good architecture, design and governance to enable cost control and change management must first be in place.That might sound straightforward, but I've recently seen examples of insurers and brokers embarking upon ambitious change programs, only to discover that they threw the baby out with the bathwater years ago.To understand why you need to understand the model of outsourcing that we all came to embrace in the late 1990s and 2000s.For most of the 20th century, companies owned, managed and directly controlled all of their assets. As the world became more globalised, access to cheap labour and goods encouraged the outsourcing of perceived 'non-core' activities, everything from business processes, customer call centres, and latterly, IT services.The outsourcing trendWhere did it lead? Today, the vast majority of corporates have embraced a third-party model for mission-critical services including managed IT services, SaaS and cyber security. In fact, the IT outsourcing sector contributed $361 billion to the IT services market in 2021, a figure that is set to rise to $587 billion by 2027.That's not to say that IT outsourcing or offshoring is a 'bad thing'. It has allowed insurers and brokers to become more agile, to scale up, overhaul legacy systems quickly and relatively easily, reduce costs and gain access to talent that might otherwise have been unavailable. But has the pendulum swung too far? This is a question I find myself asking when tasked with helping companies that have lost so much internal expertise and knowledge over the years that they don't what their starting point is, let alone their end point.These are organisations which have hollowed out their own engineering capabilities, especially if outsourcing to an offshore partner.Two-in-the-box modelTo effectively outsource, companies need to adopt a 'two-in-the-box' model, where they maintain governance over their third party and invest the time and rigour to maintain documents internally.If change isn't governed and managed correctly there will inevitably be a degradation in the core documentation of the organisation. You've lost your knowledge, you don't govern your change and it all degrades to the point where you have a fundamental piece of work to do to bring it back up to standard.It feels to me as though there's a ticking time bomb in the IT sector where we've thrown too much of it over the fence. Not all of our attention is on 'two-in-the-box' model and we're now being asked to go 'faster, quicker, better' and we can't. So have we reached a tipping point?Hand on heart, how confident are you?For any successful cloud migration, you need to go back to the fundamentals of delivery - understand the risk issues and dependencies - whether around architectural design and/or the interdependencies of applications and how they relate to each other - for the whole program.For that, what you need is good reference architectures and service owners who understand their applications. When those fundamentals are in place, migrating and making changes becomes easy. But when it is missing, you have to start from scratch. Based on this experience, I would advise all the CIOs and CTOs out there to ask what level of confidence they have that their service owners truly understand their architecture and underlying services, to the extent that you can take advantage of moving towards the cloud without falling at the first hurdle.
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Use it or lose it
With the reality that we are in a new business cycle, insurers and brokers are finally beginning to invest in multi-year transformation programs. But there has to be a few quick wins along the journey and the user experience must be a priority to realise some benefits.After several years of talk about transformation, at ECMS we're suddenly starting to see a lot of action from our insurance and broker clients. Four of them are currently undergoing hugely ambitious digital transformation journeys and the outlook is looking strong.This includes the high-profile Future at Lloyd's digital strategy, which continues its journey of migrating its core applications off mainframe and onto the cloud, despite inevitable hiccups along the way. It's a move the corporation hopes will ultimately save insurers and brokers an estimated £800m in operating costs by reducing bureaucracy and increasing automation, bringing the 337-year-old market into the 21st Century. There's no escaping from the challenges of the past few years, which helped accelerate some of the change taking place in the industry, but also left many organisations frozen and unwilling to commit. But we have now emerged from the haze and uncertainty of the pandemic. And despite ongoing uncertain economic and geopolitical headwinds, there is an acceptance that the business cycles must move forward and now is as good a time as any to transform.With commercial insurance and reinsurance rates hardening, the focus on extracting value from data is accelerating. Rate increases were generally in the region of 35% at the recent 1 January renewals, and while the impact of inflation and volatile equity markets are still being felt, interest rate rises offer the promise of favourable investment returns ahead, despite reserving pressure.CISOs and CROs know that in this environment they have to empower their underwriters and claims professionals to make the best, most fruitful decisions they can. Access to better data and analytics ultimately means these professionals can earn (or save) the business money by using available insights to their best advantage. Adopting these tactics also provides more resilience when it comes to regulatory pressure.If they can make better, quicker and more precise risk-based decisions, the boost in premiums and competitive edge will almost certainly support the major investment that is needed for multi-year transformation projects.What can you deliver now?Among the priorities for those focused on achieving greater efficiencies and finding the edge when it comes to data are cloud-based computing platforms, event-driven architectures, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and self-service capabilities. Major multi-year transformation projects inevitably take time and commitment, especially for major organisations that are bringing together multiple businesses and systems.We often see this in the broking sector given the consolidation of the past two decades. Among the 100 independent UK brokers ranked as the largest in 2010, almost two thirds have been merged into a larger rival.These ambitious consolidators are typically dealing with multiple legacy systems, different licenses and platforms which can be so unwieldy that a straightforward integration is impossible. Instead, it calls for a ten-year strategy to completely reengineer the core operating model. The investment and commitment to such projects needs to be protected, but there is inevitably significant cost scrutiny and pressure to deliver tangible value in the near term.This is where micro services are a good option, helping businesses to scale up by bringing in other applications and removing over reliance on one platform or system. De-scoping change programs and dividing them into slightly smaller projects - selecting the use of micro services to compliment - is a good way of delivering value at each of these stages, while also maintaining buy-in from major stakeholders, including board-level sponsors.Prioritise the user and the rest will fall into placeA staggering 70% of transformation projects fail. There are many and varied reasons for this - including cultural resistance to change or staff changes, with new project leaders derailing often slow projects that are only half complete. Too often, it also comes down to the fact the user experience has not been a priority, often due to a lack of time given to achieving the desired outcome, and in the insurance business this can really hinder how readily, and enthusiastically new technology is adopted. If staff are unable to walk into any office, anywhere in the world, and have the same experience, transformation endeavours will also fall flat. The kit needs to work, especially when you consider that Lloyd's and London market is ageing, with the proportion of underwriters and brokers over 50 increasing from 16% to 26% since 2014. The design and architecture of new business platforms therefore must make it as easy as possible for underwriters to be taken on a seamless journey, as their systems automate. They need to be taken through a series of steps - with the ability to access useful insights to help them assess the risk at each stage - before they arrive at the right decision and/or price.We have access to so much data but ensuring this is accessed at each stage is complex.Surprisingly, too many expensive multi-year transformation projects fail to rewire the company and prioritise the user. The risk being that at the end of it all, you've paid for something far better and perhaps more glamorous than the end point.
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The human face of inflation
Like the pandemic, the impact of inflation will be felt in many different ways, with implications for staff and the business.Last week, Lloyd's CEO John Neal said he had written to staff announcing the Corporation would be paying staff earning less than £75,000, an extra £2,500 to help cover rising living costs.It is a reminder that as with the recent COVID-crisis, businesses are once again navigating a challenging environment that has both an economic and very human element to it. The Lloyd's market's H1 results - also announced last week - revealed the market's robust underwriting performance had been overshadowed by £3.1 billion in unrealised mark-to-market losses. Rising interest rates contributed to an overall market loss of £1.8 billion for the first six months of the year.It is clear that inflation therefore presents wide-ranging challenges for boards and senior management teams. When will it peak?We have a situation where Central Banks are raising interest rates to their highest levels in 20 years, but so far this is having very little impact.Both the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) and OECD projections have so far been widely off the mark (that's the actuary in me talking), but are at least agreed in anticipating that inflation will peak this year, reducing through 2023 and resuming normal levels from 2024 onwards.In its August report, MPC noted that CPI inflation is expected to rise considerably more than it had forecast in May, from 9.4% in June to just over 13% in Q4, and to remain at very elevated levels throughout much of 2023.The other day I was having a conversation with the some of the senior managers of a Lloyd's syndicate about the fact the actual inflation rate has been beyond the 95th percentile of MPC projections. Even the experts have been surprised by the fact it's still going on, as most expected it to be a very short-term hump.For insurers - as demonstrated by the half year 2022 results - there are clear business impacts. Beyond the investment losses experienced by most carriers, there are the more uncertain impacts on the claims, underwriting and reserving side, particularly for longer-tail classes of business. And let's not forget that when times are tough (and we saw this in the years post GFC), the tendency to claim increases and - as an industry - we also see an increase in spurious and fraudulent activity.A collection of counter fraud experts at the virtual Fraud Charter roundtable (6 September 2022) – hosted by Insurance Times– confirmed the industry is already beginning to see the impact of the cost of living crisis on the frequency and type of fraudulent insurance claims.Retain your talentSome of our previous blogs have discussed the Great Resignation (or Big Quit) and the challenges organisations face in retaining talent at a time of significant movement. If anything, this is a challenge that will be heightened by inflation, as the real value of pay declines.Last month (August 2022), the ONS revealed that real pay had fallen by three percent over the last quarter. The cost of living is outpacing wage growth and affecting how far salaries go in the day-to-day life of workers. The insurance sector is a relatively buoyant industry, but at the lower rungs of our organisations are workers (who tend to be our younger professionals) who are feeling the pinch. As with the pandemic, this could have profound implications for their mental health and the ongoing adjustment to life and work in the post pandemic environment.COVID affected not just our business operations, claims and how we thought about policy wordings and definitions, but also our colleagues and their families. Inflation is another disruption that is more comprehensive in its impact across organisations, because it touches almost everything.I have sons in their early 30s who have never known inflation in their adult lives. If you've never experienced it, how do you educate your colleagues about managing through high inflationary times? How and where do you react to the stresses and strains that high inflation will inevitably bring?There are no easy answers, but Lloyd's has shown one way of responding. Earlier this year the BoE governor Andrew Bailey urged companies to exercise pay restraint, suggesting workers should not ask for big pay rises to help control inflation.His comments were met with derision from industry bodies, unions and Number 10 Downing Street. And with good reason. We all hope that inflation will be a relatively short-lived challenge, but it is incumbent upon organisations to redistribute salary rises to the bottom end of their workforce. It is essential that we focus on both the human and business impact inflation creates in order to weather yet another storm.
Just-in-case versus just-in-time: A supply chain analogy
We are living through a period of massive upheaval and uncertainty. Predicting what even the next 24 months will hold is nigh on impossible. One thing we do know: You can't shrink to greatness.Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you will be aware of the ongoing global supply chain crisis. Manufacturing companies around the world have experienced significant disruption for over two years, exacerbated by the global pandemic, trade wars, staffing issues within transport and logistics and latterly the impact of geopolitical events, most notably Russia's war in Ukraine.From lockdowns in Shanghai to the pressures of Brexit on our doorstep, many large multinationals are rethinking their approach to supply chain risk management. Previously, the emphasis was on 'just-in-time' lean manufacturing and gaining efficiencies by holding onto as little stock as possible.But the pendulum has swung back. Corporates are considering whether they need to retain some 'just-in-case' stockpiles - looking to high-profile examples, such as PPE shortages - as proof that sometimes it is good to hold onto a bit of stock for a rainy day.And, of course, times are changing. Globalisation as we once knew it may have seen its heydayConcerned about the impact of decisions and events on the other side of the world, some companies are moving their supply chains closer to home (so-called reshoring and 'friendshoring'). This is no small trend with up to a quarter of global supply chains are currently on the move, according to McKinsey.The perils of holding onto too much capitalSo what does this mean for the insurance industry? It is in fact a prescient analogy when you take a step back and consider the turmoil we find ourselves in.The insurance and reinsurance industry remains well capitalised, but for how long? Global reinsurance capital declined from $675 billion at the start of the year to $645 billion at mid-year 2022, according to the latest data from Aon.The industry is facing mounting Ukraine-related losses, the prospect of inflation and financial market volatility, and the Atlantic hurricane season has only just begun. In and around the usually sheltered streets of Leadenhall there is growing disquiet surrounding the cost-of-living crisis (there is no ignoring it at the petrol station or the supermarket) and how it will trickle through.There is a temptation in such uncertain circumstances to hold onto too much capital and taking an overly cautious 'just-in-case' approach while continuing to emphasise cost optimisation. This is what we see many clients doing as their margins begin to narrow.Of course there are merits in taking a cautious approach, boosting reserves, focusing on fewer, more profitable classes of business and divesting of expensive and unnecessary office space given the shift to hybrid working, for instance. But it is essential to manage such strategies very carefully: Cut too deep and it will be difficult to return.Not everyone is at the same stage in the cycle. Some remain doggedly in growth mode, seeking M&A opportunities and tapping into private equity investment. There is still money around, but it comes with greater scrutiny attached and growing pressure to generate the right level of returns.What of the middle road? How do you grow and optimise the business while holding onto some capital? What levers do you pull? Either you reinvest, or you think differently. Time to reinvestAs Paul Jardine mentioned in his latest blog post, the time to act is now. You've got to overcome your hesitancy and take some bold steps on your transformation program. Don't wait until the next soft market and/or market shock because it will be too late and the market will have moved on.Think about your growth strategy and how you're going to get the revenue up. We are currently seeing a lack of investment in acquisitions (with a few notable exceptions), but the hard market cycle can't last forever and the organic growth opportunities will begin to dwindle.There is a lot of guesswork around what the immediate future holds but you need to live and die by the data that you have. Based on the data, you should know how to move forward.The trends we are seeing play out in global supply chains thus apply to the world of insurance when it comes to cost versus revenue, or just-in-case versus just-in-time. Ultimately, you can't keep shrinking to greatness and companies have got to reinvest. Those that do should find ample opportunity to take market share.
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Why you don't want to be a slow husky
Innovation for innovation's sake can send you down an expensive rabbit hole. Ask yourself: what question are you trying to answer and is the customer at the heart of it? The insurance industry is enjoying some of the best market conditions it has seen in a while, despite increasingly challenging headwinds. In such an environment it can be tempting to make hay while the sun shines and to forget about the future. But now is precisely the time to be thinking strategically about your digital transformation and asking where you want to be in five years' time. Here's why: Once we're back in the depths of a soft market or dealing with the next systemic risk, there simply won't be the bandwidth or the capital. And, if you don't do it now, your competitors definitely will. There is a tendency in the insurance sector to put off innovation, to just benchmark ourselves against our peers and forget why we are doing all of this. We've got to stick our head above the parapet and think not only about the threat of disruption from competitors within the industry but the threat from external players we haven't even thought about. Widen your lensI remember meeting up with a former colleague who had become the chairman of a major insurer and I asked him what the difference was between being a full-time CFO and being in his plural career. His answer was that previously he thought he had the broadest possible view. The company was benchmarking itself against its peer group, the market and best practice. But in reality, his view was far too narrow. "We weren't spending enough time thinking about the 'What ifs' or the threats we didn't even know about because we were so focused on our business, people, mission and strategy, results and our shareholders," he said. "It's only when you step back, and you've got time to pause and think, that you realise there's a lot of other stuff going on."An example I always used to give was the Finnish Rubber Works, which was established in 1898 to manufacture wellington boots. During presentations, I would go through every stage of the corporate history, then pause and ask the audience, who is the company? It was Nokia, which at the time, was the largest mobile phone company in the world. We all know what happened next. Nokia's incredible decline in just six years because it was blind to the threat from new technology - notably from the iPod/iPhone - and because it had failed to innovate in time. Putting the customer firstDon't delay. Now is the time to sacrifice some margin to maintain your competitive position. But be clear on why you are innovating and what questions you are seeking to answer. First on the list has got to be, how do we offer more value to the customer?We all know that customer expectations are changing. It's no longer just about the product - it's now about the service. Through e-commerce, we are all used to getting what we want in the most efficient way possible. I went on a road trip to Portugal recently and was scratching my head because each country has different legal requirements on what equipment you are required to carry - everything from a spare set of bulbs through to breathalyser kits. I was sitting at the laptop, put a few search terms into Amazon and viola, up came a page full of comprehensive European travel kits - all reasonably priced and next-day delivery.The needs of the customer is one of the guiding principles of the LMG Data Council. We need to have the customer in mind with every discussion and decision we make. Ultimately, our aim is to deliver a world-class customer journey with minimal workarounds, single points of data entry and one single version of the truth. But currently, just 50p in every pound spent on premium is going towards the customer, so there is a long way to go. Be selective There is no need to reinvent the wheel - the technology exists and there are some fantastic insurtechs doing creative things. But be selective. Look outside of the confines of the industry and ask yourself, what does your customer want and expect? The innovators are thinking about how they use their resources more effectively and how they enhance them through the smart use of technology.At Peacce, where I am also an advisor, we are doing some work with clients to generate insights into the prospects who don't buy their products. They went through the journey of getting a quote but didn't buy... why was that? Was it too expensive or did they not feel valued? There's still an awful lot of work to be done around meeting customer expectations.So the technology to achieve our transformation goals is there already. The next step is harnessing it, selecting the right options and enriching the most useful datasets so you can make better decisions that will ultimately lead to great customer outcomes. Crucially, don't wait until the next soft market. By then, you will have been left behind. Or to put it slightly more crudely: If you're not the lead dog pulling the dog sled, your view will always be the same.
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Lloyd's turns the spotlight to culture
For the first time, Lloyd's Project Rio places culture at the front and centre of a set of principles-based standards syndicates must strive to achieve. We can all point to examples of toxic corporate cultures which have been the undoing of some of the world's biggest brands. These include excessive risk taking and cultures of blindness that brought down Lehman Brothers during the Great Financial Crisis and contributed to the Volkswagen emissions scandal to cultures of bullying and harassment, some of them uncomfortably close to home. Yet for too long the importance of corporate culture has been sidelined. Treated as an intangible aspect of the business that is considered too esoteric to effectively regulate compared to other measures of governance and performance. With its Project Rio Principles for Doing Business at Lloyd's, the Corporation is challenging this perception. In an era that has seen and is continuing to see a profound shift in the importance assigned to inclusion & diversity and ESG, Lloyd's has sent a clear message that market participants must seek to create and maintain diverse, ethical and authentic cultures by, among other things: Demonstrating leadership focus on fostering an inclusive, high-performance culture; Ensuring behaviour expectations are clear and there is zero tolerance for inappropriate behaviour; Encouraging speaking up (and that there are appropriate tools for employees to do so); Ensuring diverse representation within their workforce and leadership population and be inclusive in how talent is recruited and retained to reflect society and their customers, and Understand their employee population, collecting appropriate data and taking action to create an inclusive employee experience. It is essential to increase accountability for culture at a firm level, believes Lloyd's. "We have called out culture as a principle on its own to reflect the momentum behind the many initiatives to improve culture across the market," reflected Kasey Brown, Culture and Engagement Lead at Lloyd's in a market briefing. "We recognise that culture is unique, it can be a source of competitive advantage for firms but we also recognise that culture can be an organisation's downfall and we don't want that to happen." The market wants syndicates to be more "intentional" about culture and proactive in shaping and managing their culture so firms can attract and retain the talent they need to deliver on their strategy. This is because encouraging greater diversity helps to avoid groupthink and fosters greater innovation. For firms that can demonstrate they are taking concrete steps to create and maintain inclusive and high-performance cultures, there are obvious competitive advantages. There is a growing evidence of research into the strong correlations between the ability of organisations' that prioritise ethnic and gender diversity (including balanced boards) to outperform their peers. Research shows that inclusive teams make better decisions 87% of the time. Beyond these competitive benefits, Lloyd's has also committed to taking a lighter touch approach to syndicates that score highly across the dimensions it considers most critical, culture being one. The easing of the market's compliance burden should help free up management time and resource to focus on growth and innovation. The market has indicated it understands each firm's approach to meeting the principles outlined under Project Rio will, appropriately, vary depending upon the size and maturity of the organisation. But as always, the tone must be set from the top. In order to foster an environment in which colleagues feel adequately comfortable to share their personal data, it is essential to communicate what the benefits are and how their information is being used. The workforce must first understand the why, and then the how. Active allyship programmes help to foster cultures of inclusion and acceptance. Returner programmes are among the more innovative recruitment methods which can help to tap into more diverse talent pools, supporting women - for instance - who have taken a career break to start a family. Recognising the importance of transferable skills as the industry evolves allows firms to look far beyond the confines of EC3. Successive CEOs of Lloyd's have pushed the market forward in raising minimum standards for performance, and culture is now recognised as a critical dimension to that. It is a journey and will not happen overnight. But if, as a business, you can demonstrate you are instilling a positive and authentic culture with proper representation of inclusion and diversity across your team and board, the Corporation expects your organisation will grow and drive value over time. And, crucially, it will give you the space to get on with delivering on your strategic goals.
ESG: Why insurers must be the change
Forget the disappointments of COP26. This is the insurance industry's opportunity to step up and drive the Race to Zero by offering industry-wide transition incentives, a building-back-better approach to claims and funding crucial scientific research. Such an approach will improve the underlying risk to the benefit of all stakeholders. It is fair to say there was some disappointment following the COP26. A feeling that the targets agreed in the Glasgow Climate Pact did not go far enough, with only a few countries making their pledges legally binding. What was also clear at the climate summit was the essential role of insurance, both in absorbing the physical toll of a more extreme climate but also, and crucially, in driving risk mitigation and resilience. As world leaders backed away from making tough decisions, the opportunity grew for the insurance industry to drive the transition we all need to see. But it needs to be joined up, transparent and go beyond the requirements of TCFD and other climate risk reporting frameworks. Re/insurers, MGAs and brokers know that the "E" in ESG is far more than a tick-box exercise. They also know that insureds that are incentivised to invest in climate adaptation and mitigation ultimately benefits their book of business by reducing claims volatility. To date, we have seen admirable industry initiatives that aim to bring some of our best thinkers around the table to come up with joint solutions and initiatives, including innovative risk transfer schemes for some of the world's most vulnerable and underinsured regions. One of the lasting images from COP26 was when the foreign minister of Tuvalu addressed the summit knee-deep in water. It was an undeniable representation of the climate crisis that faces us all, but that will disproportionately hit our island nations. The UN-convened Net-Zero Insurance Alliance holds great promise. There are examples of policies that offer premium discounts to energy firms that can demonstrate they are meeting their SDG targets. At Lloyd's, an ESG-syndicate is launching in January 2022. And Willis Towers Watson has made significant strides with its Climate Transition Pathway solution. Time to scale up But we need a consistent, industry-wide approach to drive and financially support and incentivise insureds' transitions to zero carbon. It is time to scale up some of these different approaches and get everyone to buy in. By providing our clients with information that helps them to be better businesses, we also benefit ourselves and society more broadly. When their risks are better managed, they become better risks from an insurance perspective, whilst becoming greener and more sustainable. From a risk mitigation perspective, the principle of 'building back better' must be widely adopted and discussed. It should become common practice that any flood-hit property, for instance, is restored in a flood resilient manner - and that we have frank discussions about insurability. I always remember a photo taken during a UK flood event. It was of a field clearly within a flood plain, completely submerged in water with only the top part of a sign showing, promoting an exciting new housing development. In this country, we have a shortage of housing stock, but we need to be building with future climate in mind. These, after all, were the principles upon which the government-backed Flood Re risk pool was based. Insurers and their loss adjusters and claims managers should be funding clients to rebuild in a sustainable way, rather than perpetuating the status quo. Some insurers are being very creative in the remediation and adaptation type work, because they recognise it improves customer retention and it's the right thing to do. But the examples are too few and far between. As an industry, we must also invest more in research as eventually the science and data will help to inform policy. We need more industry practitioners to invest in initiatives like the Nekton Foundation (where I sit on the Board of Trustees), which carries out deep ocean exploration to gain scientific evidence and knowledge so we can better protect our natural world through innovative policy design. I have always been surprised the insurance industry has not been more involved in such crucial research. The data and insights generated are essential to our transition journeys and restoring and protecting naturally resilient ecosystems, such as coral reefs and mangrove forests. And, as we have mentioned before in this blog, actions speak louder than words. As an industry, we have to walk the talk, be authentic and embrace the changes required. It requires true leadership and the ability to collaborate for a greater purpose, even if that initially means giving away some of the secret sauce It struck me as depressingly ironic that on the day I read about the new Lloyd's ESG framework, there were two supercharged petrol-fuelled cars sitting outside Number 1 Lime Street - supercars waiting to be flogged to wealthy City workers. It is the kind of activity that has to be consigned to history, because it sets the wrong tone at a time when we need to be leading by example and being altogether more accountable as an industry.
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Identifying and masking PII in unstructured data
Insurance organisations produce and manage a large volume of data, of which it is estimated that 80% of that data is unstructured. Understanding what information your unstructured data holds is key, not only for extracting valuable insights but also for complying with regulations such as GDPR and internal data retention policies. The opportunityBy its nature, unstructured data is not easily accessible as it can be hidden in a variety of formats, across numerous file types and stored in locations that might not be regularly checked or know to contain this information. Ohalo's Data X-Ray platform is an industry leading platform enabling the automated, real-time discovery, classification and redaction of unstructured data (down to a word level within a given file). How we can helpECMS is a specialist consulting partner to insurance organisations with deep understanding of the business and technical requirements of regulatory and compliance programmes such as GDPR or data retention. ECMS are a proponent using Ohalo’s X-Ray as a tool to quickly address the challenges that unstructured data brings to insurance markets in particular. We can support your needs through a phased approach utilising our delivery consulting experts across implementation, configuration and process design to support remediation activities.Initiation – agree data sources to deploy the agentless software and start producing impactful outputs with the native engine.Design and fine tuning – out the box rules can be enhanced and allow for new custom searches to be quickly configured to find insurance-specific areas of interest including hidden cyber coverage, outdated wordings, sanctions, identifying policies as part of inward/outward reinsurance.Analysis - using the results to create MI reports for board level digestion as well as inform decision making via workflows, assign cases, and give evidence priority to unstructured data that needs immediate attention.Data X-Ray uses machine learning and natural language processing to cater for the most sophisticated data protection, compliance and governance use cases. The Data X-Ray tool brings vast benefits over other unstructured data analysis tools through its improved speed using ElasticSearch, advanced categorisation abilities and the power of custom rules created with ECMS’ insurance domain knowledge that rapidly meet the specific challenges of your data, strategic requirements and industry-wide challenges.Contact us today to get your change project off the ground.
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Fixing a Broken Broking Process
Using Netcall’s Liberty Create, ECMS help businesses to build apps that unite processes, systems and data together in one automated workflow.InnovationInnovation is key to thriving in a competitive market. We all know that to innovate effectively, we need to deliver the right product at the right price at the right time. More often than not timeliness are a large barrier to success due to long development and release cycles. We are leveraging Liberty Create to deliver to innovate at pace.Standardising and simplifying processesAcross the insurance industry processes can be challenging, prone to error and double data-entry occurances. Many organisations have a larger number of existing systems which house data and do not effectively and efficiently connect to each other, meaning there are many opportunities for improving processes and user experience while delivering cost savings. Improve the broker experienceWith Liberty Create we can standardise and simplify processes, helping organisations to build apps that brings together all the processes, systems and data together in one automated workflow, meaning a reduction of the risk of errors and double data-entry.The application can be easily configured to work across the entire lifecycle of insurance journeys. As an example, in a broking process it can manage the workflow from pre-placement and placement, quotation and negotiation to firm order and binding, including endorsements and renewals. The power of Liberty Create means that stakeholders involved in the process can be prompted to act at specific moments and consequently, data flows between all relevant systems automatically. This results in improved compliance controls and operational resilience.Creating a top-line revenue opportunityWith a platform that enables business users to respond to customer needs rapidly, for example through the deployment of new products and optimising processes, customer experience can be enhanced. In our experience, this leads to fewer drop outs through online and offline customer journeys, delivering increased revenue for organisations.Contact us today for more information on how Netcall can help you digitise your offering.
Comprehensive Windows 10 Migration For Specialty Insurer
The TaskTo migrate business units running Windows 7 to Windows 10, streamline the company’s use of the software and related applications, educating new users while finding cost and workflow efficiencies where possible. The ChallengeFollowing a number of acquisitions, a global specialty commercial insurer and reinsurer found it had several business units using Windows 7 in different tenants. There was widespread duplication of licenses and a large number of redundant applications, creating unnecessary cost for the organisation as well as increasing confusion. The business was finding that service levels were much lower than expected and users complained they couldn’t work efficiently. It risked being left behind in the market.This roll-out was also being conducted among users who were largely non-IT professionals or enthusiasts. The 2,500+-strong workforce were working across a range of different applications, with little visibility of what even colleagues in the same department were using. Some aspects of even commonly-used Office suites were troublesome to users, such as the use of Excel add-ins that come as standard. Many couldn’t always fully articulate which applications or add-ins were most needed during the initial technology audit. Initial ‘Understand the User’ workshops were critical groundwork for the project.Additionally, due to a policy of comprehensive outsourcing in the past, the insurer hadn’t yet built up an internal IT resource with the capacity to fully oversee the migration. Similar projects with two other consultancies had stalled, resulting in some internal scepticism that an outside agency could resolve the problem. The SolutionTransparency from the outset was key. ECMS worked in partnership with a global specialty commercial insurer and reinsurer to establish a team, led by a programme director with extensive experience in stakeholder and technology transformation management. Clear lines of communication meant internal leaders at the client had visibility of every stage in the process, including budget accountability and workstream progress. This was critical in an environment where there were multiple moving parts to the project, all progressing at different speeds. The year-long project focused on four, core remedial areas: Centralisation: single location laying the groundwork for future changeConsolidation: a strategic solution secure-by-design and fit for purposeSimplification: review and rationalise configuration, integration and operationsCost reduction: eliminate wasteful processes and surplus technologies. The work of migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10 itself involved creating centralised management of the company’s software use to improve visibility of usage and application versions. Multiple software variants were rationalised to remove licence duplication and a full desktop refresh was undertaken. An extensive employee survey programme across all 2,500+ Windows users across 26 countries, plus an audit of existing solutions discovered which applications were in use and business critical. This led to a streamlining process where more than 1,000 applications were whittled down to 800. The process was also created to be flexible and able to integrate new add-ins and user-specific personalisation as their importance to the users came to light. ECMS’s support during the migration and solution deployment was significant with five members of the team on site educating employees on new technology, as well as supporting the company during a switchover to its new service manager, Infosys. Stakeholder support during the handover to the new service provider was in addition to the original brief but ECMS made sure that the client was fully equipped to handle its technology needs with its new provider going forward. Flexibility had been the watchword across the 12-month project and additional resource or skills were always on hand to bridge gaps in expertise as they arose. The OutcomeThe migration project is year one of a three-year strategic technology investment plan. It created a basis for the client to build a single platform that will drive business benefit from reduced application installs and improved security access. Ultimately, improved business effectiveness will drive long-term cost savings in the business, as well as contribute to improved customer experience and brand value. Through improved employee collaboration via the Windows suite, the company is now more agile and responsive, able to adapt better to new market conditions, innovations and customer needs. The project also instilled greater employee confidence in using Windows 10 solutions. This has generated more interest in adopting new technologies, that could set this global specialty commercial insurer and reinsurer up as a future-ready insurer with the competitive edge. The ECMS Secret SauceThis was an IT project aimed at non-IT people. With ultimate transparency on processes and costs from the start, ECMS didn’t just deliver technical expertise but confidence to the client that the project would be delivered on spec, on time and on budget. A ‘white glove’ handover process also made sure that this global specialty commercial insurer and reinsurer was never left to manage its new technology infrastructure without the necessary supportsupporting to hand, either from third parties or internally."ECMS were able to deliver great strategic value to the client throughout this programme and delivered a bespoke solution to a complex set of business challenges. The ECMS team collaborated extensively, taking advantage of team member’s individual expertise, combining these towards a common goal. Feedback at the design, build and implementation stages was overwhelmingly positive and the client from the early stages began seeing benefits from our delivery, approach and knowledge." - Programme Lead
True inclusion is driven by company culture
Our friends at Eames Partnership have brought together some of the LGBTQ+ community from within the reinsurance and insurance market to celebrate Pride Month with a GRID Podcast special. In this episode, the expert panel downloads on what true inclusion looks like and how you drive this in the workplace. For Theresa Farrenson, customer experience and integration lead at Aon, true inclusion is driven by company culture. "You can have inclusive workplaces, processes and procedures, but if they are being ignored, then your workplace isn't inclusive. Fundamentally, the workplace, firstly and foremost, has to feel safe. So your employees need to be able to come to work and perform to the best of their abilities and go home feeling good about that. And that means not feeling they are subjected to bullying, harassment or just simply feeling bothered. And then the next level on the maturity curve is to create an environment in which people can flourish and be treated and respected as individuals and bring the best of ourselves to the workplace because therein lies the real secret about how to maximise human potential in your organisation."You can listen to the full episode below and subscribe on Apple, Spotify and other podcast platforms.
Technology adoption in insurance: and evolution or revolution?
As an industry, insurance is often lampooned for its lack of adoption of technology. Characterised as an industry where brokers carry leather-bound binders, beholden to physical inky stamps and fax machines, it’s fair to say we’re still seen as behind the times. But those in the industry will know we’re slightly more sophisticated these days. Multiple efforts to move to electronic placing are finally gaining traction, enhanced by the enforced remote working nature of the past 18 months. But is it more accurate to say we've undergone a technological evolution rather than a revolution? Hear insights from top executives across the insurance and (re)insurance market on the GRID Podcast from Eames Partnership, including:Greg Hendrick, CEO at Vantage, Karen Graves, former COO at Inigo, Maamoun Rajeh, CEO & Chairman at Arch Re, Rachel Conran, CEO at RSA Luxembourg, Shevawn Barder, CEO at AM Re Syndicate, Kenrick Law, Head of Asia Pacific at Allianz Re, and Steve Arora, CEO at Axis Re.Listen below, or subscribe on Apple and Spotify.
Rethinking company culture
How has the Covid-19 pandemic made insurance executives rethink company culture, and how do you ensure that it permeates to office, remote and hybrid workers? Hear insights from top executives across the insurance and (re)insurance market on the GRID Podcast from Eames Partnership, including:Greg Hendrick, CEO at Vantage, Karen Graves, former COO at Inigo, Maamoun Rajeh, CEO & Chairman at Arch Re, Rachel Conran, CEO at RSA Luxembourg, Shevawn Barder, CEO at AM Re Syndicate, Kenrick Law, Head of Asia Pacific at Allianz Re, and Steve Arora, CEO at Axis Re.Listen below, or subscribe on Apple and Spotify.
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ECMS partners with Mitratech to manage Shadow IT and uncover hidden risk
Our strategic partnership with Mitratech and ClusterSeven is here to help mitigate risk for enterprises in the insurance and financial services sector.Bringing to light End User Computing assets hidden across your enterpriseWith ClusterSeven we can discover and manage the hidden, sensitive spreadsheets, applications, and data assets that lie outside of IT’s control – and create risk. By easily and efficiently capturing and maintaining an inventory of the files your organization relies upon and monitor who’s making changes, we can help you meet audit and compliance requirements and prevent problems before they impact your enterprise.“Organisations looking to uncover hidden risks search for guidelines and technology that ensure their compliance and operational success in this endeavor. ECMS’s deep knowledge of the insurance market allows them to accurately advise companies, as well as make future recommendations, based on a current state assessment. Furthermore, ECMS can also assist in implementing Mitratech’s technology to support other strategic business innovations in the future, delivering increased transparency, efficiency, and collaboration across the organisation."When combining Mitratech's Alyne or ClusterSeven technology and ECMS' deep industry expertise, you empower your organization with next-generation capabilities critical to ensuring a comprehensive look into your risk management program, uncovering even hidden risks, and obtaining full visibility of your true risk exposure. Time to increase transparency, transform compliance processes, and boost collaboration across enterprises and third parties.”- Henry Umney, Managing Director of GRC Strategy, MitratechHow we work with Mitratech"Mitratech's suite of tools empowers us to tackle our clients' most complex regulatory and compliance challenges head-on. With our expertise and Mitratech's cutting-edge technology, we're able to provide innovative solutions that solve our clients' challenges effectively and efficiently. One of the tools we utilise is ClusterSeven, which offers unparalleled visibility into our clients' EUC (End-User Computing) estate. This allows us to identify and address potential risks and issues that may have gone unnoticed in the past, giving our clients peace of mind knowing they're prepared for any regulatory audits or compliance checks."- Carlos Mingo, Senior Manager – ECMSIf you would like to chat further about what ClusterSeven can do for your business - contact us.
Welcome: Elis Luige, Business Development Manager at ECMS
We would like to introduce Elis Luige who will be leading business development at ECMS. Elis is a business development and growth consultant with 10 years of experience gained at a Big4 consultancy, a private family office and a reinsurance broker. With her project management and reinsurance knowledge, she is very well placed to help ECMS develop our business and grow the scope of our offering. Elis is known for her enthusiasm and reputation for consistently delivering the best solutions to solve client problems. She constantly strives to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and innovations. In her spare time, Elis enjoys playing tag and touch rugby and going to gym classes.Carlos Mingo, Business Development Senior Manager at ECMS says "I believe Elis will bring a unique set of skills to the table that will undoubtedly benefit the team. However, it is her energy and enthusiasm that truly sets her apart. Driven and passionate about her work, she is posed to make a meaningful impact and help drive success. With such a positive outlook and unwavering dedication, it's clear that she is a valuable addition to the ECMS team."
Welcome: Sana Majid, Business Analyst at ECMS
It is with pleasure that we welcome Sana Majid to our Business Analyst Team here at ECMS.During, and following her degree at UCL, Sana has undertaken internships in the technology, wealth and asset management worlds, followed by a chosen career path in Business Analysis. Starting as a junior BA in an investment software company, she then moved to a consultancy where she had the opportunity to get involved in analyst roles touching on Agile, process and payments. Sana believes with this next step in her career she will be able to continue growing her understanding of the insurance industry and fine tune her BA skills to help clients increase efficiency in strategic programs and projects. Sana will be a great asset to ECMS and the BA Centre of Excellence we are building. Her experience, enthusiasm and energy are an asset to the team and Pete Machin, Lead BA believes “Sana will be instrumental in helping to drive forward the Business Analysis practice. Her determined and positive attitude, team ethics, and approachability will help the practice thrive. Sana’s experience to date gives us a strong Business Analyst who can work on any project. Sana has a great skillset that will be a major asset to our clients on their projects and I look forward to working alongside her."
ECMS partners with Mitratech to manage Shadow IT and uncover hidden risk
Our strategic partnership with Mitratech and ClusterSeven is here to help mitigate risk for enterprises in the insurance and financial services sector.Bringing to light End User Computing assets hidden across your enterpriseWith ClusterSeven we can discover and manage the hidden, sensitive spreadsheets, applications, and data assets that lie outside of IT’s control – and create risk. By easily and efficiently capturing and maintaining an inventory of the files your organization relies upon and monitor who’s making changes, we can help you meet audit and compliance requirements and prevent problems before they impact your enterprise.“Organisations looking to uncover hidden risks search for guidelines and technology that ensure their compliance and operational success in this endeavor. ECMS’s deep knowledge of the insurance market allows them to accurately advise companies, as well as make future recommendations, based on a current state assessment. Furthermore, ECMS can also assist in implementing Mitratech’s technology to support other strategic business innovations in the future, delivering increased transparency, efficiency, and collaboration across the organisation."When combining Mitratech's Alyne or ClusterSeven technology and ECMS' deep industry expertise, you empower your organization with next-generation capabilities critical to ensuring a comprehensive look into your risk management program, uncovering even hidden risks, and obtaining full visibility of your true risk exposure. Time to increase transparency, transform compliance processes, and boost collaboration across enterprises and third parties.”- Henry Umney, Managing Director of GRC Strategy, MitratechHow we work with Mitratech"Mitratech's suite of tools empowers us to tackle our clients' most complex regulatory and compliance challenges head-on. With our expertise and Mitratech's cutting-edge technology, we're able to provide innovative solutions that solve our clients' challenges effectively and efficiently. One of the tools we utilise is ClusterSeven, which offers unparalleled visibility into our clients' EUC (End-User Computing) estate. This allows us to identify and address potential risks and issues that may have gone unnoticed in the past, giving our clients peace of mind knowing they're prepared for any regulatory audits or compliance checks."- Carlos Mingo, Senior Manager – ECMSIf you would like to chat further about what ClusterSeven can do for your business - contact us.
Welcome: Elis Luige, Business Development Manager at ECMS
We would like to introduce Elis Luige who will be leading business development at ECMS. Elis is a business development and growth consultant with 10 years of experience gained at a Big4 consultancy, a private family office and a reinsurance broker. With her project management and reinsurance knowledge, she is very well placed to help ECMS develop our business and grow the scope of our offering. Elis is known for her enthusiasm and reputation for consistently delivering the best solutions to solve client problems. She constantly strives to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and innovations. In her spare time, Elis enjoys playing tag and touch rugby and going to gym classes.Carlos Mingo, Business Development Senior Manager at ECMS says "I believe Elis will bring a unique set of skills to the table that will undoubtedly benefit the team. However, it is her energy and enthusiasm that truly sets her apart. Driven and passionate about her work, she is posed to make a meaningful impact and help drive success. With such a positive outlook and unwavering dedication, it's clear that she is a valuable addition to the ECMS team."
Outsourcing: Has the pendulum swung too far?
We're all under pressure to move 'faster, quicker, better'. But this is only achievable if you've got your fundamentals in place.To gain the full benefits of cloud migration, the fundamentals of good architecture, design and governance to enable cost control and change management must first be in place.That might sound straightforward, but I've recently seen examples of insurers and brokers embarking upon ambitious change programs, only to discover that they threw the baby out with the bathwater years ago.To understand why you need to understand the model of outsourcing that we all came to embrace in the late 1990s and 2000s.For most of the 20th century, companies owned, managed and directly controlled all of their assets. As the world became more globalised, access to cheap labour and goods encouraged the outsourcing of perceived 'non-core' activities, everything from business processes, customer call centres, and latterly, IT services.The outsourcing trendWhere did it lead? Today, the vast majority of corporates have embraced a third-party model for mission-critical services including managed IT services, SaaS and cyber security. In fact, the IT outsourcing sector contributed $361 billion to the IT services market in 2021, a figure that is set to rise to $587 billion by 2027.That's not to say that IT outsourcing or offshoring is a 'bad thing'. It has allowed insurers and brokers to become more agile, to scale up, overhaul legacy systems quickly and relatively easily, reduce costs and gain access to talent that might otherwise have been unavailable. But has the pendulum swung too far? This is a question I find myself asking when tasked with helping companies that have lost so much internal expertise and knowledge over the years that they don't what their starting point is, let alone their end point.These are organisations which have hollowed out their own engineering capabilities, especially if outsourcing to an offshore partner.Two-in-the-box modelTo effectively outsource, companies need to adopt a 'two-in-the-box' model, where they maintain governance over their third party and invest the time and rigour to maintain documents internally.If change isn't governed and managed correctly there will inevitably be a degradation in the core documentation of the organisation. You've lost your knowledge, you don't govern your change and it all degrades to the point where you have a fundamental piece of work to do to bring it back up to standard.It feels to me as though there's a ticking time bomb in the IT sector where we've thrown too much of it over the fence. Not all of our attention is on 'two-in-the-box' model and we're now being asked to go 'faster, quicker, better' and we can't. So have we reached a tipping point?Hand on heart, how confident are you?For any successful cloud migration, you need to go back to the fundamentals of delivery - understand the risk issues and dependencies - whether around architectural design and/or the interdependencies of applications and how they relate to each other - for the whole program.For that, what you need is good reference architectures and service owners who understand their applications. When those fundamentals are in place, migrating and making changes becomes easy. But when it is missing, you have to start from scratch. Based on this experience, I would advise all the CIOs and CTOs out there to ask what level of confidence they have that their service owners truly understand their architecture and underlying services, to the extent that you can take advantage of moving towards the cloud without falling at the first hurdle.
Why you don't want to be a slow husky
Innovation for innovation's sake can send you down an expensive rabbit hole. Ask yourself: what question are you trying to answer and is the customer at the heart of it? The insurance industry is enjoying some of the best market conditions it has seen in a while, despite increasingly challenging headwinds. In such an environment it can be tempting to make hay while the sun shines and to forget about the future. But now is precisely the time to be thinking strategically about your digital transformation and asking where you want to be in five years' time. Here's why: Once we're back in the depths of a soft market or dealing with the next systemic risk, there simply won't be the bandwidth or the capital. And, if you don't do it now, your competitors definitely will. There is a tendency in the insurance sector to put off innovation, to just benchmark ourselves against our peers and forget why we are doing all of this. We've got to stick our head above the parapet and think not only about the threat of disruption from competitors within the industry but the threat from external players we haven't even thought about. Widen your lensI remember meeting up with a former colleague who had become the chairman of a major insurer and I asked him what the difference was between being a full-time CFO and being in his plural career. His answer was that previously he thought he had the broadest possible view. The company was benchmarking itself against its peer group, the market and best practice. But in reality, his view was far too narrow. "We weren't spending enough time thinking about the 'What ifs' or the threats we didn't even know about because we were so focused on our business, people, mission and strategy, results and our shareholders," he said. "It's only when you step back, and you've got time to pause and think, that you realise there's a lot of other stuff going on."An example I always used to give was the Finnish Rubber Works, which was established in 1898 to manufacture wellington boots. During presentations, I would go through every stage of the corporate history, then pause and ask the audience, who is the company? It was Nokia, which at the time, was the largest mobile phone company in the world. We all know what happened next. Nokia's incredible decline in just six years because it was blind to the threat from new technology - notably from the iPod/iPhone - and because it had failed to innovate in time. Putting the customer firstDon't delay. Now is the time to sacrifice some margin to maintain your competitive position. But be clear on why you are innovating and what questions you are seeking to answer. First on the list has got to be, how do we offer more value to the customer?We all know that customer expectations are changing. It's no longer just about the product - it's now about the service. Through e-commerce, we are all used to getting what we want in the most efficient way possible. I went on a road trip to Portugal recently and was scratching my head because each country has different legal requirements on what equipment you are required to carry - everything from a spare set of bulbs through to breathalyser kits. I was sitting at the laptop, put a few search terms into Amazon and viola, up came a page full of comprehensive European travel kits - all reasonably priced and next-day delivery.The needs of the customer is one of the guiding principles of the LMG Data Council. We need to have the customer in mind with every discussion and decision we make. Ultimately, our aim is to deliver a world-class customer journey with minimal workarounds, single points of data entry and one single version of the truth. But currently, just 50p in every pound spent on premium is going towards the customer, so there is a long way to go. Be selective There is no need to reinvent the wheel - the technology exists and there are some fantastic insurtechs doing creative things. But be selective. Look outside of the confines of the industry and ask yourself, what does your customer want and expect? The innovators are thinking about how they use their resources more effectively and how they enhance them through the smart use of technology.At Peacce, where I am also an advisor, we are doing some work with clients to generate insights into the prospects who don't buy their products. They went through the journey of getting a quote but didn't buy... why was that? Was it too expensive or did they not feel valued? There's still an awful lot of work to be done around meeting customer expectations.So the technology to achieve our transformation goals is there already. The next step is harnessing it, selecting the right options and enriching the most useful datasets so you can make better decisions that will ultimately lead to great customer outcomes. Crucially, don't wait until the next soft market. By then, you will have been left behind. Or to put it slightly more crudely: If you're not the lead dog pulling the dog sled, your view will always be the same.
Lloyd's turns the spotlight to culture
For the first time, Lloyd's Project Rio places culture at the front and centre of a set of principles-based standards syndicates must strive to achieve. We can all point to examples of toxic corporate cultures which have been the undoing of some of the world's biggest brands. These include excessive risk taking and cultures of blindness that brought down Lehman Brothers during the Great Financial Crisis and contributed to the Volkswagen emissions scandal to cultures of bullying and harassment, some of them uncomfortably close to home. Yet for too long the importance of corporate culture has been sidelined. Treated as an intangible aspect of the business that is considered too esoteric to effectively regulate compared to other measures of governance and performance. With its Project Rio Principles for Doing Business at Lloyd's, the Corporation is challenging this perception. In an era that has seen and is continuing to see a profound shift in the importance assigned to inclusion & diversity and ESG, Lloyd's has sent a clear message that market participants must seek to create and maintain diverse, ethical and authentic cultures by, among other things: Demonstrating leadership focus on fostering an inclusive, high-performance culture; Ensuring behaviour expectations are clear and there is zero tolerance for inappropriate behaviour; Encouraging speaking up (and that there are appropriate tools for employees to do so); Ensuring diverse representation within their workforce and leadership population and be inclusive in how talent is recruited and retained to reflect society and their customers, and Understand their employee population, collecting appropriate data and taking action to create an inclusive employee experience. It is essential to increase accountability for culture at a firm level, believes Lloyd's. "We have called out culture as a principle on its own to reflect the momentum behind the many initiatives to improve culture across the market," reflected Kasey Brown, Culture and Engagement Lead at Lloyd's in a market briefing. "We recognise that culture is unique, it can be a source of competitive advantage for firms but we also recognise that culture can be an organisation's downfall and we don't want that to happen." The market wants syndicates to be more "intentional" about culture and proactive in shaping and managing their culture so firms can attract and retain the talent they need to deliver on their strategy. This is because encouraging greater diversity helps to avoid groupthink and fosters greater innovation. For firms that can demonstrate they are taking concrete steps to create and maintain inclusive and high-performance cultures, there are obvious competitive advantages. There is a growing evidence of research into the strong correlations between the ability of organisations' that prioritise ethnic and gender diversity (including balanced boards) to outperform their peers. Research shows that inclusive teams make better decisions 87% of the time. Beyond these competitive benefits, Lloyd's has also committed to taking a lighter touch approach to syndicates that score highly across the dimensions it considers most critical, culture being one. The easing of the market's compliance burden should help free up management time and resource to focus on growth and innovation. The market has indicated it understands each firm's approach to meeting the principles outlined under Project Rio will, appropriately, vary depending upon the size and maturity of the organisation. But as always, the tone must be set from the top. In order to foster an environment in which colleagues feel adequately comfortable to share their personal data, it is essential to communicate what the benefits are and how their information is being used. The workforce must first understand the why, and then the how. Active allyship programmes help to foster cultures of inclusion and acceptance. Returner programmes are among the more innovative recruitment methods which can help to tap into more diverse talent pools, supporting women - for instance - who have taken a career break to start a family. Recognising the importance of transferable skills as the industry evolves allows firms to look far beyond the confines of EC3. Successive CEOs of Lloyd's have pushed the market forward in raising minimum standards for performance, and culture is now recognised as a critical dimension to that. It is a journey and will not happen overnight. But if, as a business, you can demonstrate you are instilling a positive and authentic culture with proper representation of inclusion and diversity across your team and board, the Corporation expects your organisation will grow and drive value over time. And, crucially, it will give you the space to get on with delivering on your strategic goals.
ESG: Why insurers must be the change
Forget the disappointments of COP26. This is the insurance industry's opportunity to step up and drive the Race to Zero by offering industry-wide transition incentives, a building-back-better approach to claims and funding crucial scientific research. Such an approach will improve the underlying risk to the benefit of all stakeholders. It is fair to say there was some disappointment following the COP26. A feeling that the targets agreed in the Glasgow Climate Pact did not go far enough, with only a few countries making their pledges legally binding. What was also clear at the climate summit was the essential role of insurance, both in absorbing the physical toll of a more extreme climate but also, and crucially, in driving risk mitigation and resilience. As world leaders backed away from making tough decisions, the opportunity grew for the insurance industry to drive the transition we all need to see. But it needs to be joined up, transparent and go beyond the requirements of TCFD and other climate risk reporting frameworks. Re/insurers, MGAs and brokers know that the "E" in ESG is far more than a tick-box exercise. They also know that insureds that are incentivised to invest in climate adaptation and mitigation ultimately benefits their book of business by reducing claims volatility. To date, we have seen admirable industry initiatives that aim to bring some of our best thinkers around the table to come up with joint solutions and initiatives, including innovative risk transfer schemes for some of the world's most vulnerable and underinsured regions. One of the lasting images from COP26 was when the foreign minister of Tuvalu addressed the summit knee-deep in water. It was an undeniable representation of the climate crisis that faces us all, but that will disproportionately hit our island nations. The UN-convened Net-Zero Insurance Alliance holds great promise. There are examples of policies that offer premium discounts to energy firms that can demonstrate they are meeting their SDG targets. At Lloyd's, an ESG-syndicate is launching in January 2022. And Willis Towers Watson has made significant strides with its Climate Transition Pathway solution. Time to scale up But we need a consistent, industry-wide approach to drive and financially support and incentivise insureds' transitions to zero carbon. It is time to scale up some of these different approaches and get everyone to buy in. By providing our clients with information that helps them to be better businesses, we also benefit ourselves and society more broadly. When their risks are better managed, they become better risks from an insurance perspective, whilst becoming greener and more sustainable. From a risk mitigation perspective, the principle of 'building back better' must be widely adopted and discussed. It should become common practice that any flood-hit property, for instance, is restored in a flood resilient manner - and that we have frank discussions about insurability. I always remember a photo taken during a UK flood event. It was of a field clearly within a flood plain, completely submerged in water with only the top part of a sign showing, promoting an exciting new housing development. In this country, we have a shortage of housing stock, but we need to be building with future climate in mind. These, after all, were the principles upon which the government-backed Flood Re risk pool was based. Insurers and their loss adjusters and claims managers should be funding clients to rebuild in a sustainable way, rather than perpetuating the status quo. Some insurers are being very creative in the remediation and adaptation type work, because they recognise it improves customer retention and it's the right thing to do. But the examples are too few and far between. As an industry, we must also invest more in research as eventually the science and data will help to inform policy. We need more industry practitioners to invest in initiatives like the Nekton Foundation (where I sit on the Board of Trustees), which carries out deep ocean exploration to gain scientific evidence and knowledge so we can better protect our natural world through innovative policy design. I have always been surprised the insurance industry has not been more involved in such crucial research. The data and insights generated are essential to our transition journeys and restoring and protecting naturally resilient ecosystems, such as coral reefs and mangrove forests. And, as we have mentioned before in this blog, actions speak louder than words. As an industry, we have to walk the talk, be authentic and embrace the changes required. It requires true leadership and the ability to collaborate for a greater purpose, even if that initially means giving away some of the secret sauce It struck me as depressingly ironic that on the day I read about the new Lloyd's ESG framework, there were two supercharged petrol-fuelled cars sitting outside Number 1 Lime Street - supercars waiting to be flogged to wealthy City workers. It is the kind of activity that has to be consigned to history, because it sets the wrong tone at a time when we need to be leading by example and being altogether more accountable as an industry.
Identifying and masking PII in unstructured data
Insurance organisations produce and manage a large volume of data, of which it is estimated that 80% of that data is unstructured. Understanding what information your unstructured data holds is key, not only for extracting valuable insights but also for complying with regulations such as GDPR and internal data retention policies. The opportunityBy its nature, unstructured data is not easily accessible as it can be hidden in a variety of formats, across numerous file types and stored in locations that might not be regularly checked or know to contain this information. Ohalo's Data X-Ray platform is an industry leading platform enabling the automated, real-time discovery, classification and redaction of unstructured data (down to a word level within a given file). How we can helpECMS is a specialist consulting partner to insurance organisations with deep understanding of the business and technical requirements of regulatory and compliance programmes such as GDPR or data retention. ECMS are a proponent using Ohalo’s X-Ray as a tool to quickly address the challenges that unstructured data brings to insurance markets in particular. We can support your needs through a phased approach utilising our delivery consulting experts across implementation, configuration and process design to support remediation activities.Initiation – agree data sources to deploy the agentless software and start producing impactful outputs with the native engine.Design and fine tuning – out the box rules can be enhanced and allow for new custom searches to be quickly configured to find insurance-specific areas of interest including hidden cyber coverage, outdated wordings, sanctions, identifying policies as part of inward/outward reinsurance.Analysis - using the results to create MI reports for board level digestion as well as inform decision making via workflows, assign cases, and give evidence priority to unstructured data that needs immediate attention.Data X-Ray uses machine learning and natural language processing to cater for the most sophisticated data protection, compliance and governance use cases. The Data X-Ray tool brings vast benefits over other unstructured data analysis tools through its improved speed using ElasticSearch, advanced categorisation abilities and the power of custom rules created with ECMS’ insurance domain knowledge that rapidly meet the specific challenges of your data, strategic requirements and industry-wide challenges.Contact us today to get your change project off the ground.
Fixing a Broken Broking Process
Using Netcall’s Liberty Create, ECMS help businesses to build apps that unite processes, systems and data together in one automated workflow.InnovationInnovation is key to thriving in a competitive market. We all know that to innovate effectively, we need to deliver the right product at the right price at the right time. More often than not timeliness are a large barrier to success due to long development and release cycles. We are leveraging Liberty Create to deliver to innovate at pace.Standardising and simplifying processesAcross the insurance industry processes can be challenging, prone to error and double data-entry occurances. Many organisations have a larger number of existing systems which house data and do not effectively and efficiently connect to each other, meaning there are many opportunities for improving processes and user experience while delivering cost savings. Improve the broker experienceWith Liberty Create we can standardise and simplify processes, helping organisations to build apps that brings together all the processes, systems and data together in one automated workflow, meaning a reduction of the risk of errors and double data-entry.The application can be easily configured to work across the entire lifecycle of insurance journeys. As an example, in a broking process it can manage the workflow from pre-placement and placement, quotation and negotiation to firm order and binding, including endorsements and renewals. The power of Liberty Create means that stakeholders involved in the process can be prompted to act at specific moments and consequently, data flows between all relevant systems automatically. This results in improved compliance controls and operational resilience.Creating a top-line revenue opportunityWith a platform that enables business users to respond to customer needs rapidly, for example through the deployment of new products and optimising processes, customer experience can be enhanced. In our experience, this leads to fewer drop outs through online and offline customer journeys, delivering increased revenue for organisations.Contact us today for more information on how Netcall can help you digitise your offering.
Comprehensive Windows 10 Migration For Specialty Insurer
The TaskTo migrate business units running Windows 7 to Windows 10, streamline the company’s use of the software and related applications, educating new users while finding cost and workflow efficiencies where possible. The ChallengeFollowing a number of acquisitions, a global specialty commercial insurer and reinsurer found it had several business units using Windows 7 in different tenants. There was widespread duplication of licenses and a large number of redundant applications, creating unnecessary cost for the organisation as well as increasing confusion. The business was finding that service levels were much lower than expected and users complained they couldn’t work efficiently. It risked being left behind in the market.This roll-out was also being conducted among users who were largely non-IT professionals or enthusiasts. The 2,500+-strong workforce were working across a range of different applications, with little visibility of what even colleagues in the same department were using. Some aspects of even commonly-used Office suites were troublesome to users, such as the use of Excel add-ins that come as standard. Many couldn’t always fully articulate which applications or add-ins were most needed during the initial technology audit. Initial ‘Understand the User’ workshops were critical groundwork for the project.Additionally, due to a policy of comprehensive outsourcing in the past, the insurer hadn’t yet built up an internal IT resource with the capacity to fully oversee the migration. Similar projects with two other consultancies had stalled, resulting in some internal scepticism that an outside agency could resolve the problem. The SolutionTransparency from the outset was key. ECMS worked in partnership with a global specialty commercial insurer and reinsurer to establish a team, led by a programme director with extensive experience in stakeholder and technology transformation management. Clear lines of communication meant internal leaders at the client had visibility of every stage in the process, including budget accountability and workstream progress. This was critical in an environment where there were multiple moving parts to the project, all progressing at different speeds. The year-long project focused on four, core remedial areas: Centralisation: single location laying the groundwork for future changeConsolidation: a strategic solution secure-by-design and fit for purposeSimplification: review and rationalise configuration, integration and operationsCost reduction: eliminate wasteful processes and surplus technologies. The work of migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10 itself involved creating centralised management of the company’s software use to improve visibility of usage and application versions. Multiple software variants were rationalised to remove licence duplication and a full desktop refresh was undertaken. An extensive employee survey programme across all 2,500+ Windows users across 26 countries, plus an audit of existing solutions discovered which applications were in use and business critical. This led to a streamlining process where more than 1,000 applications were whittled down to 800. The process was also created to be flexible and able to integrate new add-ins and user-specific personalisation as their importance to the users came to light. ECMS’s support during the migration and solution deployment was significant with five members of the team on site educating employees on new technology, as well as supporting the company during a switchover to its new service manager, Infosys. Stakeholder support during the handover to the new service provider was in addition to the original brief but ECMS made sure that the client was fully equipped to handle its technology needs with its new provider going forward. Flexibility had been the watchword across the 12-month project and additional resource or skills were always on hand to bridge gaps in expertise as they arose. The OutcomeThe migration project is year one of a three-year strategic technology investment plan. It created a basis for the client to build a single platform that will drive business benefit from reduced application installs and improved security access. Ultimately, improved business effectiveness will drive long-term cost savings in the business, as well as contribute to improved customer experience and brand value. Through improved employee collaboration via the Windows suite, the company is now more agile and responsive, able to adapt better to new market conditions, innovations and customer needs. The project also instilled greater employee confidence in using Windows 10 solutions. This has generated more interest in adopting new technologies, that could set this global specialty commercial insurer and reinsurer up as a future-ready insurer with the competitive edge. The ECMS Secret SauceThis was an IT project aimed at non-IT people. With ultimate transparency on processes and costs from the start, ECMS didn’t just deliver technical expertise but confidence to the client that the project would be delivered on spec, on time and on budget. A ‘white glove’ handover process also made sure that this global specialty commercial insurer and reinsurer was never left to manage its new technology infrastructure without the necessary supportsupporting to hand, either from third parties or internally."ECMS were able to deliver great strategic value to the client throughout this programme and delivered a bespoke solution to a complex set of business challenges. The ECMS team collaborated extensively, taking advantage of team member’s individual expertise, combining these towards a common goal. Feedback at the design, build and implementation stages was overwhelmingly positive and the client from the early stages began seeing benefits from our delivery, approach and knowledge." - Programme Lead
True inclusion is driven by company culture
Our friends at Eames Partnership have brought together some of the LGBTQ+ community from within the reinsurance and insurance market to celebrate Pride Month with a GRID Podcast special. In this episode, the expert panel downloads on what true inclusion looks like and how you drive this in the workplace. For Theresa Farrenson, customer experience and integration lead at Aon, true inclusion is driven by company culture. "You can have inclusive workplaces, processes and procedures, but if they are being ignored, then your workplace isn't inclusive. Fundamentally, the workplace, firstly and foremost, has to feel safe. So your employees need to be able to come to work and perform to the best of their abilities and go home feeling good about that. And that means not feeling they are subjected to bullying, harassment or just simply feeling bothered. And then the next level on the maturity curve is to create an environment in which people can flourish and be treated and respected as individuals and bring the best of ourselves to the workplace because therein lies the real secret about how to maximise human potential in your organisation."You can listen to the full episode below and subscribe on Apple, Spotify and other podcast platforms.
Technology adoption in insurance: and evolution or revolution?
As an industry, insurance is often lampooned for its lack of adoption of technology. Characterised as an industry where brokers carry leather-bound binders, beholden to physical inky stamps and fax machines, it’s fair to say we’re still seen as behind the times. But those in the industry will know we’re slightly more sophisticated these days. Multiple efforts to move to electronic placing are finally gaining traction, enhanced by the enforced remote working nature of the past 18 months. But is it more accurate to say we've undergone a technological evolution rather than a revolution? Hear insights from top executives across the insurance and (re)insurance market on the GRID Podcast from Eames Partnership, including:Greg Hendrick, CEO at Vantage, Karen Graves, former COO at Inigo, Maamoun Rajeh, CEO & Chairman at Arch Re, Rachel Conran, CEO at RSA Luxembourg, Shevawn Barder, CEO at AM Re Syndicate, Kenrick Law, Head of Asia Pacific at Allianz Re, and Steve Arora, CEO at Axis Re.Listen below, or subscribe on Apple and Spotify.
Rethinking company culture
How has the Covid-19 pandemic made insurance executives rethink company culture, and how do you ensure that it permeates to office, remote and hybrid workers? Hear insights from top executives across the insurance and (re)insurance market on the GRID Podcast from Eames Partnership, including:Greg Hendrick, CEO at Vantage, Karen Graves, former COO at Inigo, Maamoun Rajeh, CEO & Chairman at Arch Re, Rachel Conran, CEO at RSA Luxembourg, Shevawn Barder, CEO at AM Re Syndicate, Kenrick Law, Head of Asia Pacific at Allianz Re, and Steve Arora, CEO at Axis Re.Listen below, or subscribe on Apple and Spotify.
ECMS partners with Mitratech to manage Shadow IT and uncover hidden risk
Our strategic partnership with Mitratech and ClusterSeven is here to help mitigate risk for enterprises in the insurance and financial services sector.Bringing to light End User Computing assets hidden across your enterpriseWith ClusterSeven we can discover and manage the hidden, sensitive spreadsheets, applications, and data assets that lie outside of IT’s control – and create risk. By easily and efficiently capturing and maintaining an inventory of the files your organization relies upon and monitor who’s making changes, we can help you meet audit and compliance requirements and prevent problems before they impact your enterprise.“Organisations looking to uncover hidden risks search for guidelines and technology that ensure their compliance and operational success in this endeavor. ECMS’s deep knowledge of the insurance market allows them to accurately advise companies, as well as make future recommendations, based on a current state assessment. Furthermore, ECMS can also assist in implementing Mitratech’s technology to support other strategic business innovations in the future, delivering increased transparency, efficiency, and collaboration across the organisation."When combining Mitratech's Alyne or ClusterSeven technology and ECMS' deep industry expertise, you empower your organization with next-generation capabilities critical to ensuring a comprehensive look into your risk management program, uncovering even hidden risks, and obtaining full visibility of your true risk exposure. Time to increase transparency, transform compliance processes, and boost collaboration across enterprises and third parties.”- Henry Umney, Managing Director of GRC Strategy, MitratechHow we work with Mitratech"Mitratech's suite of tools empowers us to tackle our clients' most complex regulatory and compliance challenges head-on. With our expertise and Mitratech's cutting-edge technology, we're able to provide innovative solutions that solve our clients' challenges effectively and efficiently. One of the tools we utilise is ClusterSeven, which offers unparalleled visibility into our clients' EUC (End-User Computing) estate. This allows us to identify and address potential risks and issues that may have gone unnoticed in the past, giving our clients peace of mind knowing they're prepared for any regulatory audits or compliance checks."- Carlos Mingo, Senior Manager – ECMSIf you would like to chat further about what ClusterSeven can do for your business - contact us.
Welcome: Elis Luige, Business Development Manager at ECMS
We would like to introduce Elis Luige who will be leading business development at ECMS. Elis is a business development and growth consultant with 10 years of experience gained at a Big4 consultancy, a private family office and a reinsurance broker. With her project management and reinsurance knowledge, she is very well placed to help ECMS develop our business and grow the scope of our offering. Elis is known for her enthusiasm and reputation for consistently delivering the best solutions to solve client problems. She constantly strives to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and innovations. In her spare time, Elis enjoys playing tag and touch rugby and going to gym classes.Carlos Mingo, Business Development Senior Manager at ECMS says "I believe Elis will bring a unique set of skills to the table that will undoubtedly benefit the team. However, it is her energy and enthusiasm that truly sets her apart. Driven and passionate about her work, she is posed to make a meaningful impact and help drive success. With such a positive outlook and unwavering dedication, it's clear that she is a valuable addition to the ECMS team."
Welcome: Sana Majid, Business Analyst at ECMS
It is with pleasure that we welcome Sana Majid to our Business Analyst Team here at ECMS.During, and following her degree at UCL, Sana has undertaken internships in the technology, wealth and asset management worlds, followed by a chosen career path in Business Analysis. Starting as a junior BA in an investment software company, she then moved to a consultancy where she had the opportunity to get involved in analyst roles touching on Agile, process and payments. Sana believes with this next step in her career she will be able to continue growing her understanding of the insurance industry and fine tune her BA skills to help clients increase efficiency in strategic programs and projects. Sana will be a great asset to ECMS and the BA Centre of Excellence we are building. Her experience, enthusiasm and energy are an asset to the team and Pete Machin, Lead BA believes “Sana will be instrumental in helping to drive forward the Business Analysis practice. Her determined and positive attitude, team ethics, and approachability will help the practice thrive. Sana’s experience to date gives us a strong Business Analyst who can work on any project. Sana has a great skillset that will be a major asset to our clients on their projects and I look forward to working alongside her."
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ECMS60 is a curated collection of sixty-second reads for leaders in the know.
Each month, our email digest shares insight on the key themes impacting leaders in the insurance, financial services and technology markets, coupled with analysis from our trusted advisors and leaders.
