By Stewart Williams, COO, VIPR
Lloyd’s Blueprint Two reforms launched last November with the aim of shaving £800m of costs from the market by the end of 2022. But now Lloyd’s is suggesting the final cost savings could be even higher than that.
The reason for this seems to be research from Simon Asplen-Taylor. He’s the data lead of the Future Lloyd’s reform programme. In a recent webinar, he said his research has uncovered the sheer scale of current inefficiencies in the market when it comes to data processing.
Rekey, rekey, rekey
One example he gave was that brokers and managing agents are filling some data fields 31 separate times. “There is an awful lot of rekeying and data getting lost,” he said.
At the same time Lloyd’s chief executive John Neal has since gone on record as saying that the final cost savings “could potentially be even bigger” that the £800m estimate first announced.
At VIPR, we’re not surprised by this. In fact, when brokers and MGAs start to combine the effects of Lloyd’s common data record with top class data management and reporting software, we’d be more surprised if the market doesn’t save a lot more.
APIs are the next step
When we look at the key themes of Blueprint Two, they include:
- Data quality is key
- Clients need to be able to self-select their systems so they can manage their data in the way that best suits their business needs
- The provision of APIs to connect the data
- Reduction in the duplication of effort
At VIPR, we already provide the first two of these elements today. Once the APIs are available, we’ll be able to feed the data to central repositories. These will become the source for others to extract that data. Because the data will already be in a standardised form, the need to rekey data will virtually disappear in many cases.
First version of core data record now up and running
On 11th March, Lloyd’s also announced the first version of its core data record (CDR). Lloyd’s is collaborating with ACORD to adopt the global standards already used both in the London market and internationally.
Now Lloyd’s is conducting a market-wide consultation to seek input and feedback on this first version of its CDR.
The key to future cost savings
At VIPR, we welcome these developments. It shows that Blueprint Two is on course and it also shows that Lloyd’s remains keen to work with the market going forward. With better data quality and common data standards, we believe that the majority of rekeying and data duplication being done by many brokers and MGAs today will disappear altogether.
Certainly, we feel we can play our part in continuing to support these efforts, and in continuing to help brokers and MGAs cut costs more than they ever thought possible, simply through better data management and more actionable reporting.
