ABANDON BORDEREAUX FOR A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

It has been all too easy to blame regulation for the data and reporting challenges faced by the Lloyd’s coverholder market. It’s an easy scapegoat. However, inertia is the real culprit: our sector’s poor track-record of adopting new technologies to improve our business processes.

In our effort to stay ahead of the regulatory challenge and meet the London Matters goals of making our market a cheaper, easier, and faster place do business, we need to embrace change. So far though, we still rely on bordereaux reporting, the same system we used 50 years ago.

Our biggest innovation has been bordereaux mapping technology, which forces data into binder management systems, but then we complain about data quantity and quality. To meet regulatory demands, we added more columns to bordereaux, and demanded that our producers fill them in. We blamed regulation. Not surprisingly, coverholders didn’t smile at the change. Some walked away to markets that are cheaper, easier, and faster.

London is good at spending money in an effort to make the weary bordereau horse gallop more quickly. Only a few have sought to shoot the old nag, and develop in its place a better, more efficient business processing model which thoroughly leverages the great technologies that have arrived since bordereaux were first conceived.

One company that has taken this bold and practical step is Endeavour Insurance Services, the London market broker specialising in North American coverholder relationships. They have adopted Advantage, Advent Claims’ radical new insurTech replacement for bordereaux. Endeavour is in the process of rolling out Advantage to its Canadian coverholder clients who immediately recognise the benefits of the system and love its ease of use.

Advantage has redefined the coverholder claims process by revolutionising the way information is shared between delegated authority holders, brokers, and their markets. Endeavour says Advantage has exceeded expectations at every juncture, and rendered old systems and approaches obsolete.

The web-based tool drastically simplifies the process of capturing, transmitting, and reporting claims data, removing the inherent inefficiencies of the market’s moribund bordereaux approach. The system is returning Lloyd’s to a position of competitive advantage over local markets, while shaving down expense ratios.

“Advantage frees our coverholders from onerous column-filling exercises and archaic bordereaux”, says Sarah Newman of Endeavour. “Instead they can focus on supporting clients and seeking new business.” The straight-through processing enabled by Advantage eliminates the inevitable errors introduced by re-keying, and instantly delivers to carriers the data necessary for regulatory reporting, while reducing the compliance burden London shifts to coverholders.

It also provides Endeavour with essential information, creating the opportunity to analyse binder performance, which can then be discussed with clients and markets. This enables Endeavour to spend more time delivering real added value, rather than wasting hours on administration and validation.

Advantage is now in use or about to be implemented for fifty Endeavour binders with gross written premium of roughly $150,000,000. Every coverholder who has seen the system has responded with enormous enthusiasm.

By reimagining how the back-end of the coverholder system works, Advent Claims has delivered a technology solution which mirrors the way binders operate, and revolutionised processing. The bordereaux is consigned to the dustbin (although Advantage will generate them automatically, if desired).

To find out how Advantage can make your company cheaper, easier, and faster to do business with, please contact me: [email protected]