Software house gives further explanations as to what brokes should expect
Software house SSP has apologised to brokers for the system troubles that have left brokers unable to work.
It is coming up to a week since a power outage at the Solihull Data Centre left many brokers unable to access their back office systems, and unable to do work on renewals and new quotes.
Chief operating officer Steve Pearson apologised for the ‘extremely frustrating’ situation.
He said: “We apologise for the ongoing delays in restoring our services and appreciate that this is extremely frustrating time for customers.”
Both the MIB and the FCA have been notified about the system failure.
Pearson also revealed how brokers should tackle renewals.
He said: “In addition SSP has been in dialogue with all motor insurers who trade products through the SSP system, to agree emergency processes to support SSP brokers transacting policies that have fallen due for renewal during the outage period.”
The system failure has triggered the wrath of brokers, many of whom have been locked out of trading. They want better communication on the situation.
Richard Stevens, a principal for appointed representative Trelawney said: “We are sitting here unable to do anything. We are very disillusioned with SSP; not only with what has happened, but the lack of customer service.
“There has been no real statement explaining what has happened or suggesting they are going to learn anything from it. They need to put a statement to customers, to show some amount of empathy.”
Richard Thompson insurance Brokers director Sandy Rich added: “We owe it to our clients to know there has been no loss of data or a breach.”
THE FULL SSP STATEMENT YESTERDAY EVENING
Update regarding the ongoing Major Incident at Solihull Data Centre. (18:30)
We apologise for the ongoing delays in restoring our services and appreciate that this is extremely frustrating time for customers.
Over the course of today we have moved forward with the data base restore and balancing work and have made good progress, with support from our service partner, HP.
We are working on preparation of customer servers in parallel with this operational testing, so that when it is complete we will be ready to start to stand-up and test individual customer instances of their systems.
The precise time that systems start to become available to customers will depend in part on our progress on the work through the night, and in part on the size and complexity of the system instance that supports their business – because this will have an influence on the time that some of the technical and testing tasks take to complete.
We will commence talking to individual customers in order to bring them back online as soon as this stage is complete.
We will provide a further update on timing as soon as we can in the morning and are aiming for 9am.
Alongside the service restoration work, SSP and the MIB held a call today at 12.30pm following SSP’s notification to the MIB on the 31/8/16.
It was agreed that SSP would supply a list of brokers impacted and insurers who are likely to be affected, to support minimising the impact. Both lists were provided to the MIB within 1 hour of the call closing.
The MIB are being very supportive based on the set of circumstances, and are informing the call centre operatives so the impact to motorists is minimised.
In addition SSP has been in dialogue with all motor insurers who trade products through the SSP system, to agree emergency processes to support SSP brokers transacting policies that have fallen due for renewal during the outage period.
Once again, please accept our sincere apologies for the ongoing inconvenience caused. We will continue to keep you regularly updated on progress via email, SMS and the SSP Customer Portal.
As mentioned a further update on progress and planned completion times will be provided in the morning.
Kind regards
SSP Major Incident Management Team
No comments yet