Three more customers to join Kinnect

Eight of Lloyd’s ten largest managing agents now back electronic platform Kinnect after three more businesses pledged their support for it today.

QBE European Operations – including Lloyd’s largest managing agent Limit and its company market operations – and managing agent Cathedral now back Kinnect and are expected to sign contracts shortly. Chaucer has also committed its support and will join later in the year.

This brings the total number of businesses supporting the platform up to 18, with the 15 managing agents representing 60 per cent of Lloyd’s capacity.

Kinnect, which securely exchanges risk data and wordings between brokers and underwriters, has also released volume figures for the first time today, showing good progress in its first year of handling risks daily.

They show that since May last year, when brokers Marsh and Willis began putting their North American Property risks across the platform daily, Kinnect has handled more than 500 risks in that one class, representing over 1,300 signed lines and $800 million in premiums.

Kinnect Chief Executive Toby Davies said: “This is further evidence that Kinnect is backed by more and more key businesses. The volume figures reveal how committed those customers are and how actively Kinnect is being used to support data transfer in this key market sector. These numbers will continue to grow as we adopt more risk classes, starting with Terrorism in June.

“Kinnect is key to achieving a harmonised, efficient process that is vital to achieving contract certainty. By reducing the errors caused by re-keying data, and creating an audit trail of every risk, Kinnect plays an important role in meeting the FSA’s 2006 deadline.”

Chaucer Chief Executive Ewen Gilmour said: “We are strong advocates of improved and streamlined process in the London market. The Kinnect platform is a very significant contribution to this goal and towards contract certainty. It will benefit Chaucer, brokers and our clients and we are delighted to provide our support.”

The new pledges of support follow the announcement last month of five new businesses backing Kinnect as part of an ongoing initiative by leading brokers Marsh and Willis to explain the increasing benefits of the platform.

Chaucer, Cathedral and QBE join brokers Marsh, Willis and Guy Carpenter, and underwriters ACE European Group, AEGIS, Amlin, Ascot, Beazley, Catlin, Markel, Wellington, Hiscox, Liberty Syndicates, SVB, and Talbot.

Kinnect is a Lloyd’s sponsored business that facilitates the electronic capture and transfer of risk data between brokers and underwriters to lock down contractual terms including risk disclosures. Recording transactions properly aids regulatory compliance, improves the speed and efficiency of settlement and claims, reduces legal disputes, and therefore improves contract certainty.

Lloyd’s underwriting customers now represent 60 per cent of capacity at Lloyd’s. (Source: Lloyd’s Franchise Performance Directorate, February 2005)

Lloyd’s ten largest Lloyd’s managing agents, ranked by capacity and starting with the biggest, are: Limit, Chaucer, Amlin, Hiscox, Beazley, Wellington, Liberty, Kiln, BRIT, and Catlin. (Source: Lloyd’s Member Services Unit, January 2005)

Kinnect is currently user-governed with the intention of becoming user-owned in the longer term.

Chaucer Holdings PLC is a specialist insurance and reinsurance underwriting group listed on the London Stock Exchange providing the management skills, expertise and capital required to underwrite insurance business at Lloyd’s. Chaucer is the second largest managing agency group at Lloyd’s, managing five syndicates with total capacity of £853m. At the core of the business is Syndicate 1084, which underwrites marine, non marine and motor insurance and Nuclear Syndicate 1176.

QBE Insurance Group is one the world’s leading international insurers and reinsurers, headquartered in Sydney, Australia. The Group operates out of 36 countries across the globe, with a presence in all key insurance markets. In 2004, the company underwrote gross written premium totalling AUD $8,766 million (£5,062.4m) and held shareholders’ funds of A$4,420m (£2,552.6m). As well as writing commercial insurance and reinsurance in the company market, QBE European Operations is active in Lloyd’s through the managing agency Limit, and additionally writes UK regional retail business through Ensign.

Cathedral Underwriting Ltd manages Lloyd’s Syndicate 2010 which specialises in property and aviation treaty reinsurance and direct and facultative property insurance and reinsurance.

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.

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