Kinnect response

The overall principle of Kinnect makes very good sense, but the presentation to the market has not always been well made.

It is recognised that IT changes in London are a nightmare, but with the history of disasters such as EPS in the 1990s one would have hoped that lessons had been learnt.

Project Blue Mountain, the precursor to Kinnect, was introduced into the market without any obvious large scale market

backing or explanations as to what it was actually expected to deliver were difficult to understand. I know this, because I arranged several platforms at conferences for their speakers. All that the market could see were ever spiralling costs.

Good initiatives in the market, such as Class (Elass in 1988), have been successful because the market, both brokers and underwriters, was presented with well thought out plans, designed by both business and IT market practitioners.

With the overall backing of the market (LMBC, IUA and Lloyd's) the cost of development was therefore made with confidence and was the last stage of the project, not the first.

I sincerely hope that Iain Saville, with his history at Crest, should be able to give the project a new impetus, but the market could be difficult to convince if it believes that the already large expenditure will be difficult to recoup.

Roger Foord
107 Leadenhall Street
London EC3

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