Lloyd's and the Company Market brought closer together
Lloyd's and the Company Market will be brought closer together through a joint claims initiative.
Speaking exclusively to Insurance Times, Ins-sure Services, which was formed last May to undertake processing and settlement functions in the London Market, confirmed the two bodies would operate a joint claims scheme.
Ins-sure information technology director David White said: "We have two old bureaus and two completely separate systems. We are coming into a single claims system."
The plans to link both markets follows the introduction of the London Market Principles (LMP) this month. LMP aims to make the market a more efficient and attractive place to do business. A universal policy document will be used by brokers and underwriters for the first time this month.
Ins-sure now hopes to speed up claims processing in the London Market. Payments currently take up to 90 days to reach the policyholder, but market guidelines say this should be a maximum of 30 days.
White said the new claims system for both the Lloyd's and the Company Market will be ready by the end of this year, or by early 2003.
He added that it "will be a significantly enhanced form" of the Claims Loss and Advice Settlement System (CLASS), a system the Company Market uses for seeing and agreeing claims on screen.
Market practitioners have welcomed the plan to create one universal claims system.
Information technology consultant Roger Foord said: "If Ins-sure is going to do its job properly, it will have one electronic system for claims. The information is already on the computer."
