Interview: Robin Merttens, RI3K


26.10.11 WEDNESDAY


Time to endorse electronic endorsements?


Robin Merttens, market place director at RI3K, tells Intelligent Insurer about the steps forward which have been taken regarding electronic placement.


Q RI3K is now part of Qatarlyst. A The acquisition by Qatarlyst has brought


What changes has that brought? financial stability, which doesn’t just


mean the ability to pay the bills. It provides confidence to clients, while allowing us to re- cruit top quality people and to invest further in our technology. There have also been cultural


changes,


with a more disciplined and process-driven ap- proach applied to the business. The acquisition has marked the end of the entrepreneurial pe- riod and we are now starting to think like a util- ity provider putting in place the sort of people, processes and structures needed to support and govern a credible global trading service in both Doha and London.


Q There have been previous at- tempts to bring efficiency to


placing, endorsements and claims in insurance and reinsurance. Do you feel the market is now ready move to electronic placement?


A You need to look at what has been learned from the London e-Endorse-


ment initiative to answer that. My take on that project is that we are getting a better under-


power. The latest news with them is that Aon is committed to an electronic placement roll-out in London using Qatarlyst, and Marsh is also pretty advanced in its thinking.


Q One of the problems following the demise of Kinnect has been


unwillingness of the market to embrace centralised systems. Can Qatarlyst over- come that?


A The remaining barriers can be catego- rised as technological, cultural and gov-


ernance-related. The technology has been up and running for five years and while there are still improvements we need to make, it does what it says on the tin. The cultural hostility re- mains, but is gradually being diluted as the community starts to understand that the initia- tive is about efficient ways to support value- added services and not screen-based trading or the enforced closure of city wine bars. The biggest challenge for us now is the question of governance. The well publicised travails of Xchanging earlier in the year have highlighted the need for the governance around centralised services which avoids the same pit- falls. This requires us to explore models which prevent exploitative pricing, guarantee service


“The biggest challenge for us now is the question of governance. The well publicised travails of Xchanging earlier in the year have highlighted the need for the governance around centralised services which avoids the same pitfalls.”


standing of the role of data messaging which has worked well for the simpler stuff, but re- vealed the need for a different approach on complex processes and complex contract struc- tures. You have to know what the problem is before you can fix it and we hope that the mar- ket might now look at our offering in that light. The initiative has also revealed that it’s only a handful of brokers who are truly committed to the modernisation process and it’s going to be down to them to lead the way, particularly the big three where we concentrate our fire-


quality, encourage continued investment in the technology and have clear rules around data ownership.


Q What’s next for Qatarlyst in London? A The most exciting development in the last few months has been the re-engage-


ment of Aon. It had to put the brakes on during 2010 while we sorted out our long-term fund- ing, but we are putting the finishing touches to a joint roll-out programme over the coming


8 | INTELLIGENT INSURER —BADEN-BADEN TODAY | Wednesday October 26 2010


Robin Merttens, market place director at RI3K


months which involves Aon Risk Services, Aon Benfield and some of their UK retail business. While I am sure that some people out there will say they have heard all this before, I have been hugely impressed by the strength of commit- ment by the relevant people at Aon and their determination to implement the process suc- cessfully this time round. While our client services team deals with


Aon’s rollout, our enlarged development team is in the process of refreshing our technology. Some components that we can incorporate now were not available when we first started to build the platform more than 10 years ago. We are taking the ‘best of breed’ tech-


nologies for document handling, sharing and transferring data and directory provision and applying 10 years’ specialist knowledge of the insurance market’s processes and data require- ments to produce something which will set a new benchmark for e-trading services. The combination of those two should be enough to keep us quiet for the next six months!


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