04 March 2005 London UK — Senior staff from brokers and managing agents are taking responsibility for the development of Kinnect by joining a new board to drive its adoption, guide its development and manage its performance.
Eight leading figures from the London market now sit on the Kinnect board as non-executive directors of the business.
The board meets for the first time today (Friday, March 4), to manage the electronic platform which securely exchanges risk data and wordings between brokers and underwriters.
Working with Kinnect�s executive directors � Chairman Iain Saville and Chief Executive Toby Davies � the board has authority, within strategic guidelines and budgets agreed with Lloyd�s, for developing Kinnect to reduce costs and risks in the London market.
Iain Saville, Chairman of Kinnect, said: �The new board puts Kinnect�s customers firmly at the centre of the decision making process. This reinforces the co-operation across brokers and underwriters that is key for the efficient development and rapid adoption of this much needed platform.
“I am delighted that these distinguished people have given their personal commitment to driving Kinnect forward to becoming a financially self-sufficient provider of essential market infrastructure.”
The new board replaces Kinnect�s Advisory Committee. It will meet monthly, with additional committee meetings to manage such areas as risk, staff and technology. Key items on the agenda include agreeing commercial policy and the forward schedule for new risk classes.
The members of the board are:
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Lord Blackwell, Senior Advisor KPMG (an independent)
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Michael Dawson, Consultant, Chaucer
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Nick Furlonge, Director, Beazley plc
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David Harris, Operations Director, Amlin
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David Ibeson, CEO Wellington Agencies Ltd
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Steve Matanle, Chairman and Chief Executive of Global Markets, Marsh
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Grahame Millwater, Chairman and Chief Executive, Willis Re
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Peter Morgan, Member of the Council of Lloyd�s
About Kinnect
Kinnect is an international venture, sponsored by Lloyd�s. It enables commercial lines trading partners to send and receive risk data electronically for quicker and higher quality business completion, greater productivity and profit via the Kinnect Platform. Kinnect is an effective solution to a problem which has long dogged the general insurance industry; that of passing data from systems used by brokers to those used by underwriters. Currently, when risk data is sent from one party to another, information must be printed off, faxed or emailed, and then re-keyed by the recipient. This process is inefficient, time consuming, costly and leads to large numbers of keying errors. It also means a real risk of discrepancies occurring between important records of data supporting an insurance contract. Kinnect solves the problem by allowing different IT systems to communicate so that risk data can be sent back and forth and stored centrally in the format each party prefers. Kinnect began in December 2001, operating under the project title of Blue Mountain. Kinnect currently operates in the United States and United Kingdom. For more information on Kinnect please visit www.kinnect.com.
