Stephen Catlin: companies must communicate better

Convex chairman and chief executive Stephen Catlin has said the market cannot survive if it does not solve the issue of how its back office communicates.

Speaking at the Insurance 3.0 event in London, Catlin added he had sympathy for the Lloyd’s management team as it sought to transform the market.

Asked about how Convex had learned the lessons of the past he replied it, like the wider market, faced a number of challenges.

“We as an industry have a number of challenges,” he added. “We have a huge legacy in terms of process, and we have a growing legacy of liability tails. Lloyd’s is in a certain amount of disarray. John Neal and John Hancock have a very difficult task on their hands, and they didn’t cause the trouble they face.”

Catlin continued that Convex had looked at the issue of how it wished to use technology and outsourcing.

“We have horizontally outsourced our processes to one company,” he explained. “We have been questioned on the decision, and it may well be seen as a risk to put all our eggs in one basket. But what we have is a back office that will talk to each other and can talk to each other.

Data is the key

“Many firms outsource in buckets and then find that these buckets cannot talk to each other. They end up with several versions of the truth.”

Data was key he added as the ability or the market to capture data continues to increase. But it is only half the story he added as the data was useless if it could not be properly accessed and used.

“We need to be able to use day in the way in which we have all hoped that could be achieved,” he added. “It is better for us and it is better for the customer.”

He said the legacy issues had been highlighted to him when XL acquired Catlin.

“I thought at the time this will not be difficult because we did not have a great deal of legacy,” he added. “However, we suddenly discovered that we had to try and turn this leviathan. We need to be more nimble if we are to response to the needs of our clients.

“As an industry we have an issue with the problems around legacy technology processes and systems.”