Connecting market people, processes and data

Many of the issues we hear claims leaders talking about lately have something in common: they’re about something broader than just claims.

For perfectly understandable reasons, carriers have traditionally organised themselves into distinct functions: claims, underwriting, finance, operations and reinsurance. But transactions, processes and data constantly cross those internal boundaries.

A claim generates information that’s potentially valuable to underwriting and actuarial teams. Delegated claims handling depends on data moving effectively between carriers and external providers. Settling claims connects claims with finance, brokers, and the wider market infrastructure. And, in a subscription market like London’s, the same claim can involve multiple carriers, each with its own systems, processes and responsibilities.

As technology makes it easier to connect all the different parts of the insurance ecosystem, there’s a valuable opportunity to step back from thinking about individual functions and processes in isolation. It’s a chance to think creatively about the connections between roles and functions – and about where fragmented processes, duplicated activity, or disconnected data are holding the market back from working as effectively as it could be.

A quick look at some of the key issues London Market claims leaders are currently talking about may help to illustrate this point.

Operational resilience

In a recent ops res scenario-testing exercise facilitated by the Lloyd’s Market Association (LMA) and Crowe, DOCOsoft and several DOCOsoft customers assessed how carriers would continue operating if access to core claims systems and services were temporarily lost.

A key aspect of this was the need to keep urgent claims payments moving in the event of system failures. But, if central services became unavailable, premium movements would also be affected. Brokers may hold records of money owed by and to individual carriers. Claims, premiums, brokers, reconciliation, and central market services are all interconnected. So, any workaround designed to keep claims moving needs to consider the wider financial and operational consequences, rather than just fixing one part of the problem in isolation.

Recovery creates challenges of its own. Simply storing transactions for processing later can create a substantial backlog when systems come back up. Large volumes of claims and premium transactions may need to be processed and reconciled at the same time. So rResilience requires planning – not only for how critical payments continue during an outage – but also for how normal financial flows are restored afterwards.

The broader lesson here is that addressing individual points of failure with isolated workarounds will only get the market so far. Claims, finance, operations, technology, brokers and market infrastructure are all ultimately interdependent, and changes in one area inevitably have consequences elsewhere.

Connecting delegated claims data

Similar issues arise in the delegated claims space. Lloyd’s Claims Management Principle maturity matrix refers, at its Advanced level, to managing agents refreshing and making use of ‘contemporary claims data’ from delegated providers – e.g. for performance management and when sharing insights with underwriting and actuarial teams.

This raises practical questions about how delegated claims data should be accessed, refreshed, and made use of. Technology is increasingly making more connected models possible. APIs between DCAs, payment providers and carrier claims systems could, for example, allow claims records – including claims below authority – to be created or updated automatically as transactions occur.

That could improve visibility, oversight and audit, while providing richer data for portfolio analysis. It could also reduce reliance on one of the more antiquated aspects of market infrastructure: the bordereau.

Despite years of work on common data standards, delegated claims data remains heavily reliant on spreadsheets. Major TPAs may have the technology to support more sophisticated connectivity, but smaller providers and those operating across different jurisdictions inevitably complicate attempts to standardise the exchange of data.

Here, as elsewhere, the challenge is by no means exclusively technological. Better connectivity also depends on common approaches to data exchange, responsibility for data quality, and what carriers actually do with the information once they have it.

Linking claims and underwriting

The same principle applies within carrier businesses. As we have often noted in previous blogs and white papers, claims data could be contributing so much more to underwriting and portfolio management. But to do that we need to break down organisational silos and make information generated by claims readily available elsewhere within the business.

AI has a role to play here. Much of the valuable information generated by a complex claim remains locked in unstructured documents. Extracting details around causes, specific types of machinery/equipment involved, and specific failure mechanisms for example, can help claims handlers identify missing information as well as creating structured insights that can be fed back into underwriting, pricing, and portfolio analysis.

Beyond applying AI to individual claims tasks, there’s an opportunity to make the information generated during the claims process more useful and accessible right across the insurance lifecycle.

Collaborating, not duplicating

Connectivity between organisations is equally important. In a subscription market, multiple carriers participating on the same risk can end up reviewing essentially the same information and each performing much the same work. Technology creates new opportunities for more systematic collaboration, allowing an acknowledged lead to undertake the primary work, while followers retain the visibility and oversight they need.

Obviously, there are legitimate limits to this approach. Different carriers retain their own responsibilities and may take different positions. Brokers and insureds have their own interests to uphold. And complex claims require challenge rather than automatic conformity.

But reducing unproductive duplication could allow scarce claims expertise to be concentrated where it adds most value. It could also create greater opportunities for claims professionals to learn from recognised class specialists on the same risks.

Existing mechanisms like Claims Lead Arrangements (CLA) and the General Underwriters Agreement (GUA) already provide ways of defining roles and responsibilities more clearly. Technology can help make collaborative models of this kind easier to operate in practice.

Making the connections count

Claims has gained considerably greater prominence within the London Market in recent years, particularly since Lloyd’s elevated claims to become its fifth Hurdle Principle in 2025. This only strengthens the argument for connecting claims more closely with other elements in the insurance ecosystem – with underwriting, finance and operations internally, with third parties like brokers, TPAs and DCAs, and with the wider infrastructure through which London Market business is transacted.

The technology increasingly exists to establish and optimise these connections. Realising the value this can unleash ultimately depends on making sure the underlying processes, responsibilities, and data flows are equally well connected.