Navigating the drivers for change: reflections from TIN London Market Claims 2025
Author: Aidan O’Neill, Founder & CEO
It was a pleasure to join Leo Dixon of Swiss Re and Chris O’Shea of Markel on stage at this year’s TIN London Market Claims, where we talked about navigating the drivers for change – delivering claims transformation in uncertain times. It was a lively, thoughtful session, expertly chaired by TIN’s Jeremy Burgess.
I was proud to see DOCOsoft finally taking on the role of main sponsor for this year’s TIN London Market Claims. We have been supporting this event for the last 13 years, and DOCOsoft have gone from strength to strength.
This is a reliably high-quality event and the perfect forum for us, as it brings together a broad community of people, all wrestling with the same challenges – each from a slightly different perspective. We’re all seeing the same pressure points in the market – but the routes we take to tackle them vary, and that’s what makes discussions like this so interesting.
Interconnected pressures
My fellow panelist Chris O’Shea kicked off with what I thought was an excellent framing of the current environment: multiple, overlapping, increasingly urgent drivers of change, from a softening market cycle to increasing internal and external expectations around service – not to mention the sheer pace of technological evolution.
Chris’ contribution very much set the tone for our discussion. There was general agreement that these drivers are interconnected. A softer market creates commercial pressures. That pushes carriers to differentiate on service, and that, in turn, forces the pace of change in terms of technology, processes and people. He stressed the importance of user experience in the technology claims handlers work with every day. As I said at the time, I couldn’t agree more.
Leo Dixon highlighted another vital dimension: the changing role of the claims professional. Claims has successfully moved from the back office to the front office, he argued, but that shift brings new expectations. Claims leaders now need – not only to deliver service – but also to generate insight, strengthen client relationships, and, ultimately, help drive growth. That’s a big evolution from the days when one person handled every claim from cradle to grave. Today’s claims managers oversee portfolios of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of claims, and need very different skills to do that effectively – skills that are essentially about change management.
Skills, succession and change management
Leo highlighted the difficulty of attracting and retaining the next generation of claims professionals, and the need for succession planning that goes beyond technical expertise. Claims leadership now requires qualities like personal authority and high-level communication skills, not just technical knowledge. That resonated strongly with me. As a technology partner, we’re acutely aware of how important it is not to underestimate or neglect the human dimension in claims transformation.
The best technology in the world will fall short if it doesn’t have the right culture and the right leadership around it. Successful adoption depends on users being involved right from the start. At DOCOsoft, we’ve learned that engagement during the design and build phases is what transforms a project from being seen as ‘something being done to us’ into ‘something we’re building together.’ When people can clearly see their ideas reflected in the end product, they’re far more likely to embrace or champion it.
Chris also stressed the importance of data literacy and analytics. It’s not enough simply to capture more data. Teams need the skill sets and bandwidth to interpret and apply it effectively. This, again, comes back to striking the right balance between people, process and technology. All three need to move forward together.
Technology as an enabler – not a destination
There was broad agreement that automation and AI are key enablers, not ends in themselves. Chris emphasised the need for a strategic plan for AI, to avoid fragmented experiments that duplicate effort or waste money. In a market like ours, where innovation can easily splinter into parallel attempts to achieve something that’s essentially very similar, central focus and governance are critical.
As we work on developing the potential of exciting new AI-powered tools like agentic AI, it’s important to recognise that the future we’re creating with tools like these will demand as much focus on change management and leadership as on the technology itself. There’s no doubt of AI’s potential, but the big question for us, as an industry, is whether we’re going to be able to put appropriate governance around, and then trust AI-enabled tools to work as intended.
There are plenty of low-hanging-fruit type opportunities out there already in the tech space that claims teams should be taking advantage of. One obvious example is straight-through processing (STP). It’s a clear illustration of the kind of automation that’s already happening, and delivering measurable benefits, for carriers in the London Market. By identifying routine, low-complexity claims and processing them automatically, carriers can accelerate payments without compromising control. The claims handler always remains in charge. Automation simply clears away the undergrowth, so skilled claims people can focus on the complex, high-value cases where human judgement adds the most value.
That’s one principle I think everyone gathered for the session could agree on: technology should remove friction, not people.
Data, integration and collaboration
We also talked about the structural challenge of data fragmentation. A single claim can touch half a dozen different systems as it moves from policyholder to broker, to insurer, to reinsurer. Each hand-off adds delay and risks distortion. It’s not hard to see the appeal of a future environment where every claim would sit on a single real-time platform accessible to all stakeholders. That might sound overly ambitious, but arguably the London Market is already moving in that direction, with greater API openness and an sharper focus on implementing more advanced market-wide data standards.
Obviously, there would be many hurdles to overcome given all the global variations in process and technology. But in the more immediate term, there are certainly plenty of opportunities for better connectivity and data-sharing between carriers and brokers. Core system providers like DOCOsoft could have a key role to play in that respect. At DOCOsoft, we handle close to half of all claims that go through the London Market, and we already have more than 30% of London Market carriers operating on a common platform. When one of them leads and others follow, there’s the potential, subject to the right agreements being in place, to track progress across that shared data layer. The idea of being able to see exactly where a claim sits at any given time is entirely feasible. That capability already exists within the systems many of us use today. All that’s missing is the collective will to connect them. With active collaboration between carriers, brokers and vendors, real-time visibility across the market is entirely possible.
The future of claims
The conversation moved on to look at where we go from here in people terms. Specifically, we talked about how to attract new talent and present claims as an exciting and rewarding career path. There was common agreement that we need to do a better job of telling our story. Chris made the point that we probably spend too much time, collectively, talking about the challenges this industry faces, and too little talking about the positives. As he said, every claim settled promptly and fairly is proof of the value the sector contributes, but we rarely communicate that value publicly.
Personal takeaways
For me, this panel session underlined just how far the claims community in London has come – and how much opportunity lies ahead. Claims teams have earned their place at the strategic centre of London Market (re)insurance businesses. The challenge now is to press ahead with giving them the tools, the data, and the systems they need to thrive. That means balancing people, process, data and technology, modernising legacy systems intelligently, and keeping collaboration front and centre.
I’d like to extend my personal thanks to my fellow panelists Leo, Chris and Jeremy for such a stimulating discussion. It was a real pleasure to take part in such a lively debate. The pace of change in claims is fast, sometimes dizzyingly so – but it’s also thrilling and energising. If the spirit of this and other conversations I had at the TIN London Market Claims event is anything to go by, this market is increasingly well prepared to navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead.