28 November 2019 | 3-minute read
Managing agency leaders’ consistent response to Lloyd’s Blueprint One can be characterised as cautious enthusiasm. The market’s underwriting operations, embodied in the LMA’s Board of Directors, have welcomed the ambitious scope of the plan to digitise and reform Lloyd’s processes and practices. Many see it as the necessary solution to a market-wide existential challenge. However, as John Neal himself has pointed out, few have complete confidence in Lloyd’s ability to execute the wide-ranging proposals.
Blueprint One targets the areas that managing agents agree need strategic attention. They assign the highest priority to four: the complex risk platform, the risk exchange, the claims solution, and the modernisation of syndication. If these welcome initiatives are to succeed, however, continued significant collaboration between Lloyd’s, the LMA’s members, and distribution partners will be essential.
Lloyd’s has many strengths which contribute to a unique value proposition for customers, but delivery of successful change has not been one of them, particularly when it comes to digitalisation. This time around, it is essential that Lloyd’s does not repeat the experience of multiple earlier projects, when benefits did not materialise. This means keeping enthusiastic market participants – and critics too – fully engaged throughout design and implementation. Leaving too much of the detail to consultants with no investment in the outcomes is unlikely to create solutions with any greater suitability or longevity than previous modernisation projects.
The LMA and its constituency were heavily involved in framing the Future at Lloyd’s prospectus, but now is not the time to sit back. Blueprint One, which followed, and the projects it sketches, will require the creation and implementation of a range of inter-connected tools to transform the vision into reality. Managing agencies are eager to be involved in the detailed design and implementation of the engines of the Future at Lloyd’s. As the proposals take shape, they will wish to participate in critical decisions such as how they are prioritised, who leads them, and which vendor partners will be selected. They will not wish to be presented with done-deals.
Just as Lloyd’s has a responsibility to reach out, managing agents also have a responsibility to offer up resources, skills, and expertise to make that engagement meaningful. Blueprint One involves not only central solutions, but also tools created by managing agencies that must integrate with them and work seamlessly together. This demands commitment from managing agents in the optimisation of the new ways of working that the Future at Lloyd’s will introduce, and is vital to their acceptance and success.
The LMA and its members will therefore continue to be involved throughout the execution stage of the Future at Lloyd’s, since engagement now is more important than ever. Both Lloyd’s and the LMA’s members must rise to the challenge of developing an in-market, world-class change management capability, comprising empowered experts with market experience who instinctively seek market input, and relentlessly pursue market-optimal solutions.
The LMA’s membership is vocal about its belief in the Future at Lloyd’s, and is determined to ensure its success. Members are willing to contribute the resources and skills necessary to make it so, and to ensure that this important effort to modernise Lloyd’s delivers on its enormous promise.
Published: 28 November 2019