Insurance

The Re/Insurance industry largely relies on outdated legacy systems. Often termed 'an arthritic tortoise', the industry is playing catch-up with issues related to contract certainty, speed, efficiency and transparency. Coupled with increasing globalization and consolidation, the industry is now looking to replace traditional paper-based transactions with electronic messages based on standards established by ACORD.

Integrand assist Infobahn to implement Infobahn’s products. Infobahn is the only software house in the world to be ISO 9001-2000 certified for

"The development of insurance/reinsurance related messaging
software based on ACORD stands and market reform program office (MRPO)"

With a mission to "Take Insurance out of the Dark Ages" and a vision that reads "Design for Tomorrow, Today", Infobahn is ready to launch a solution, Software As A Service (SaaS), that lowers the cost of entry for insurers and reinsurers into the online marketplace. SaaS delivers software over the Internet, thereby simplifying deployment, reducing acquisition costs for re/insurers and allowing Infobahn to leverage the service across a larger customer base. SaaS’ popularity has resulted from this "pay as you go" subscription licensing model. This service, accessible to all market players allows collaboration, and yet embraces competition

The Background

Every day in the London market 8000 pounds of paper were loaded in the back of a van from the companies offices in London to be transported to their offices in Kent. Annually that is 2 million pounds of paper and is enough to fill up two Jumbo 747’s.

Contract Signing was being done on a slip as shown below with the underwriters stamp and the signature and the percentage being taken up in this example 100% The actual contract could take years to be agreed upon. Thus when 9/11 happened some of the reinsurers’ said “Yes we did reinsure the Twin Towers but NOT AGAINST TERRORISM"

Thus Lloyds started a market reform office whose aim was to

• Introduce Electronic Messaging
• Have Contract certainty happen within 90 days of the Slip being signed

Lloyds in their presentation to the market have stated that the savings to the brokers, Lloyds carriers and company carriers would be over GBP 50 Million per year, and the parties involved would spend over GBP 68 Million to change to the electronic messaging format.

INFOBAHN

Infobahn is building products to enable the parties involved to switch over to Electronic Messaging and eliminate the paper world. InfoBahn’s OpenSesame (Open SEcure Services Architecture Messaging Exchange) uses the concept of Software as a Service. Infobahn’s OpenSesame is an integrated reinsurance messaging solution along with a Document Repository Interface (DRI) solution for either using it as a Service or for peer-2-peer communication between the trading partners.

OpenSesame is easy to use and conceptually can be thought of as equivalent to a SMS messaging exchange. The objective of OpenSesame is to handle all Reinsurance RLC messages namely Placing, Claim Movement, Technical Account, Settlement and Acknowledgement messages. In addition to RLC OpenSesame is capable of handling messages for Property and Casualty and Life and Annuity as well. OpenSesame’s Document repository is built on Acord standards and can function either independently or collectively with the messaging exchange to access documents from either its own repository or the repository of a broker or a market repository also.

OpenSesame can be used in any of the following scenarios

Scenario 1 - Browser – Exchange (OpenSesame) – Browser

In this Scenario the trading partners can exchange messages via the messaging exchange. Here both partners do not have a gateway or any third party application installed at their respective sides, they use a Browser to send and view the messages.

Scenario 2 – Hybrid

In this Scenario one partner sends a message to the other via the Exchange. This partner may have any third party application (gateway) installed at their side, and the second partner does not have any application installed, however the second partner can view the messages at the hub through the Browser.

Scenario 3 – Peer to Peer

In this Scenario trading partners can exchange messages directly with each other. One of the partners has any third party application (gateway) installed at their side and the second partner can have the OpenSesame application which will function as a gateway.

Infobahn is looking for partners to help it set up the Messaging Exchange in London or elsewhere in Europe. The ideal partner would be anyone or all of the following:

• Broker
• Insurance Company
• Reinsurance Company

The Messaging Exchange can be viewed as joint property of all the players similar to JETCO in Hong Kong which manages an ATM switch on behalf of the non HSBC banks such as Standard Chartered, American Express etc. These banks all have a share in JETCO and a similar philosophy could be thought off for the Messaging Exchange in London.

Other Uses of OpenSesame

If brokers, insurance companies want to transfer their claims processing to India as some of the large insurance companies such as Aviva, AIG and others have done, then the OpenSesame platform makes it easy for the companies to send documents, claims messages, technical account messages etc to India yet at the same time have the ability to link it back to their back end systems.

India is now quite well known for outsourcing and quite a few of the insurance companies have formed their own captive units for claims processing. Infobahn feels that with OpenSesame, it can provide the platform that the companies can use to outsource their claims processing to India.