Northdoor
CIT talks to Rob Stavrou of Northdoor about what captive companies should look for in a technology system, and how insurance innovations are progressing
How does your solution NDEXINSURE work?
NDEXINSURE is a comprehensive insurance administration system that integrates easily with all of a firm’s existing legacy systems and data sources including workflow, ECF and e-endorsement. The system provides risk-capture, message processing, claims handling and data warehousing components as standard, and uses web services to support web deployment. NDEXINSURE also contains a fully integrated data warehouse for supplying key management information.
Because NDEXINSURE is a modular system, it can be easily extended and configured to meet a firm’s particular business requirements, even as the business continues to develop and expand. A focus on compliance is also built directly into the system, not only in terms of its Solvency II provisions, but also thanks to its Sanctions Checking software, which provides an effective way of screening a firm’s clients against international financial sanctions lists.
How can NDEXINSURE benefit captives?
The very nature of the captive insurance market, which was created to underwrite risk for parent corporations, means that the core mission for these firms is to achieve cost savings from economies of scale and underwriting special lines of business. When choosing an insurance administration solution, firms are therefore looking to maximise ROI through scalable, flexible solutions. Harnessing data for better risk management and underwriting is also a priority as it makes the business more predictable and profitable.
On a more practical note, NDEXINSURE can help captives to capture and access their system data in order to drive their business systems more effectively, and to comply with the latest regulatory guidelines. Also, because captives sometimes have to deal with unusual lines of business, NDEXINSURE can give them flexibility they need in terms of recording and accessing different data sets, and when then reporting back to their parent company.
NDEXINSURE can also help them to plan for future growth by taking the concept of ‘future-proofed’ IT to a whole new level, as it gives them the integration, flexibility and control they need to get the most out of the systems that have right now, and also to support additional business growth in the future.
How would you describe the maturity of the IT being used within the insurance sector, compared to other financial sectors?
There used to be a view that insurers were a bit behind other sectors when it comes to IT, as they tended to use a lot of paper-based systems. However, this perception has radically changed in recent years with the onset of more modern, flexible technology and the business benefits that this can bring, such as being able to respond to market changes more quickly, as well as accessing the business information that is needed to support C-Level decisions more effectively.
With the growing use of ACORD messages and other modern, flexible technologies, I would say that the insurance sector is fast becoming one of the more mature users of IT, as it is now much more open to adopting this new technology, and already starting to see the benefits that it can bring.
How can ACORD standards generate value for insurers?
ACORD standards and messages enable the easy, standardised transfer of data between companies to improve efficiencies and reduce the manual paper trail. Because these are effectively real-time connections, data can now flow backwards and forwards on a daily basis. Previously, a lot of this information was only exchanged on a monthly or even quarterly basis.
Using these standards as part of their daily business processes can be very helpful for modern firms, as they help to ensure that firms receive all their data very quickly, and in a consistent format. As a result, firms no longer need to work through large numbers of different queries, and instead can use this standardised information to radically change their accounting and settlement processes. E-accounting transactions, for example, can now be validated much earlier, which means that funds can be collected up to 30 days earlier than before.
These improvements are not only helping to streamline the insurance settlement process, but could also lead to benefits beyond the back office, since getting transactions validated more quickly can help firms to manage their work on the placing and endorsements side of things much more effectively.
