Business opportunities may have been turned away from the London market because inefficient accounting and settlement processes make it too expensive to service, members of the IUA were told at a market briefing.
Aon operations director Bill Oram, speaking about the reform proposals developed by the London Market Principles (LMP) initiative, said reform of outdated practices would boost business and allow brokers to bring more overseas risks to the marketplace.
“By bringing in accounting and settlement, in addition to the productivity benefits that have been identified, there will also be a lot more business out there that our overseas offices want to place in this marketplace,” said Oram.
“At the moment the costs arising from inefficient market processes make it difficult for them to do this in certain areas.
“A big driver is to get more business into this marketplace.”
Oram said little had changed within Lloyd's since the 1995 report from Coopers & Lybrand, which found that hundreds of millions of pounds were being wasted through the duplication of process.
“We have been very bad in terms of execution, follow through and completion and we do have reasons to be worried about London from this perspective.”
He added: “The clock is ticking. Personally I do not think we have got very much time at all. We are starting to see this process change happening more aggressively in other markets and we have to make sure we do not fall behind.”
