The technology transformation programme at London’s oldest insurance exchange includes an electronic claims systems that is cutting settlement times by 40 per cent.

Lloyd’s of London is a subscription marketplace where underwriters who deal in money negotiate with brokers who represent clients and deal in risk.

It is an extremely complex environment.

“Shared risk means the payouts are also shared, which is where the inherent complexity lies,” said Lloyd’s chief information officer (CIO) Peter Hambling. “When you make a claim all the companies you claim from automatically get notified and all correspondence then needs to be tracked.”

Under the old manual system, brokers telephoned multiple underwriters, multiple back offices processed the claim, multiple photocopies of the paper trail were sent to all for signature and monies were collected from multiple sources.

But with the electronic system, all claim data is input in one place, all participants notified, and authorisation added directly.

“Members can get their claims settled 40 per cent quicker and brokers’ work is substantially less,” said Hambling.

At the beginning of the year, take-up of the electronic claims system was five per cent. By May it had risen to 20 per cent.

The other major development at Lloyd’s is the creation of an electronic reference library for legal and tax reporting.

“Historically the exchange held paper information but now it is documented, maintained, digitised and accessible to members,” said Hambling.

And to complement the archive, Lloyd’s has built a database of standard electronic paragraphs and legal wordings currently used to construct contracts.

The next component of the offering is to ensure the whole process is carried out accurately. So Lloyd’s has created a checking service to enable document scanning against a set of published rules which indicate if there is an error.

“The services we have just launched are just a flavour around what Lloyd’s is doing, and we will be planning more for the future,” said Hambling.