Early indicators suggest that the millennium bug is going to prove one of the most expensive damp squibs in history – to the relief of the insurance industry.
So far, the ABI, the FSA, Biba and the IIB have all said that the millennium weekend passed off without noteworthy incident. No insurer has reported problems.
Overall, it is believed that preparing for the millennium bug has cost hundreds of billions of pounds.
Of the five insurers which provided Insurance Times with figures on Y2K bug budgeting, CGU appears to have spent the most – £130 million.
The spend:
CGU: £130m; RSA: "just below £100m"; Axa: "£62m so far"; Norwich Union: "less than the £37m we had budgeted for"; Cornhill: "£7.5m this year".
A spokesman for RSA said: "There may have been one or two tiny problems all of which have been very easy to fix."
Over the New Year period, the FSA had a team ready to deal with any problems that arose. The insurers all reported in at regular intervals. The FSA said that, as with the wider financial services sector, the insurance industry had reported no glitches.
At the other end of the spectrum, Penta brokers also enjoyed a trouble-free New Year.
Penta was one of the systems highlighted throughout 1999 as being at risk of crashing. However, the software house's insistence that all would be well appears well-founded.
Richard Hartley, from Insurance Solutions in Norwich, said: "It has gone very well. Penta even had people working on New Year's Day, but the only problems with the system were minuscule and seem easily fixable."
Richard Mikula, from Topaz Insurance, echoed these views. He said: "If anything, Penta is to be congratulated. There were a lot of concerns, but it seems to have gone well."
