Tom Broughton, editor
How do you solve a legacy like Kinnect? Well Sue Langley, the Lloyd’s boss of market operations, has been forced to tackle the problem head on.
For those who don’t know the story, Kinnect was a £70m flop: a system built to revolutionise electronic trading across the market, but rejected by the heavyweights of the London institution in 2006. It seems the market was not ready to make the cultural shift. Perhaps the technology was too difficult, perhaps the key players were too bone idle.
Whatever happened three years ago, today Langley has a plan. And on the face of it, it is a good one. IBM is on board, the technology is being tested and, perhaps most importantly, the world has moved on.
The Lloyd’s Exchange is a piece of kit that enables every player to plug in to it and talk the same language. It’s more like a telephone exchange than a Kinnect-style platform. It is designed to be inclusive, working with systems provided by other suppliers, and Lloyd’s is acting as a facilitator rather than a co-ordinator or policeman. In the future, it can probably be rolled out internationally too.
Markets will only move at their own pace, however illogically slow that pace seems. But if you accept that insurance is behind the times and ultimately needs to follow its cousins in other transaction-based industries, then sign up and support this initiative. It will ultimately save you time and money. And the alternatives are too depressing to contemplate.
Book your place at the industry’s Oscars
The Insurance Times Awards is the hottest ticket of the year. Hundreds of brokers, insurers and supply-chain providers will gather to celebrate the industry’s innovation and achievements on 4 December, at the Hilton Metropole hotel in Birmingham.
Now the rigorous selection process has begun, the judges have been selected from the highest echelons of the market and they’re raring to read your entries. Space is limited so book your tables now and register your entries at insurancetimes.co.uk/awards.
No comments yet