Preparing for Blueprint Two Phase 1
The Phase 1 go-live date for the long-awaited London Market digitization project Blueprint Two is now just 18 weeks away. Following delays in both testing and releasing crucial technical specifications, everyone with a stake in London market technology needs to focus like never before on being fully prepared for Phase 1 go-live on 1 July.
As you would expect of a technology vendor handling nearly half of all claims in the London Market, DOCOsoft has been pushing as hard as anyone to get answers to the questions we and our clients need answering. This isn’t always easy, and it’s not hard to see why.
The scope of Phase 1, on the claims side alone, is ambitious, as are the currently proposed timescales. It entails a big-bang switchover from legacy claims systems CLASS and ECF to a new cloud-hosted digital processing platform ICOS, and – crucially – a ground-up rebuild of two-way claims messaging system Writeback, currently in use by 95% of London market participants.
The proximity of that 1 July deadline is certainly focusing minds as never before. A packed session on Blueprint Two at the TINtech London Market 2024 event on 6 February saw a range of concerns raised in audience questions and real pressure on the project representatives on stage. But anyone who predicted that significant changes might be announced at the Blueprint Two Market event on 26 February would have been proved wrong.
At a packed event, carriers, vendors and other market participants heard that the 1 July target is still very much in place. The key takeaway message, however, was that Lloyd’s and Velonetic would be taking a safety-first approach to go-live, rather than adhering to the timeline at any cost. In an article in Insurance Insider published the same day, Bob James of Lloyd’s was quoted reinforcing this message, saying that the final decision on switching over in July would be guided by facts, not emotions. “We’re not going to launch a system that doesn’t work,” he told the paper.
DOCOsoft’s team was out in force for the 26 February event, pressing for detail – as we do at every opportunity – on everything from timescales, specs, testing and governance to on-boarding, go-live, cutover, and fallback plans.
DOCOsoft is committing a huge amount of time and resources into ensuring full Blueprint Two readiness across the board. We are active participants in all relevant forums, and also hosting our own Blueprint Two events to keep our user community fully informed. As well as supporting a number of our clients through the Vanguard programme, we also also part of the Vendor Vanguard to ensure comprehensive testing of the Writeback implementation and check that every single piece of it works as expected – and that we’re aware of any issues in good time.
Whatever it takes, we’ll make certain that each and every one of our clients is fully prepared and fully supported for Phase 1 and every other step in the Blueprint Two process. We have the resources, the tenacity, the expertise and the hands-on market engagement to make this happen. We’re confident the short-term pain will be well worth it for the long-term gain – for all market participants and their customers.