The issue of declining revenues into Lloyd’s via the delegated authority (DA) route has been widely publicised in recent years and it remains a challenge, as TPAs continue to place business in local, more cost-effective and less complex markets. London’s delegated authority partnerships are being strained by the significant uptick in stringent reporting requirements and by cumbersome and complex processes that are prone to inaccuracy and delay.
In searching for a solution, we canvassed the opinion of stakeholders across the DA world. One, often repeated word stood out: oversight. During those conversations and drawing on our experience of building and administering expert management platform GEMINI, an idea for a solution began to crystalise to provide oversight of the entire delegated authority stakeholder process on a single system. That idea led to the creation of the collaboration platform ARIES, which was launched on Monday (17/01/21).
As the name suggests, collaboration platform ARIES brings together all DA stakeholders, enabling each to do their job once and avoid the data rekeying and constant repetition of effort required by current processes. By greatly simplifying the process, ARIES, which has already been adopted by a major London insurer, enables far greater collaboration and visibility and is designed to significantly enhance the experience for all.
The main features of ARIES include:
TPA/DCA onboarding: Allows individual companies to set up a profile to showcase its services, along with key contacts and due diligence information
Contract/binder management: Provides greater control over a carriers live/expired contract and assignment of contracts to TPAs and DCAs. This also offers TPAs and DCAs clear sight of the contracts they have been appointed to, with access to additional guidance and supporting documents
Full audit process: Enables all DA stakeholders and auditors to work within one system and undertake the entire audit process via ARIES. It further includes autoscoring, which produces management insight and instant reporting to market standards
While there are customer and supplier management systems able to undertake some of the work ARIES does, these are not integrated, end-to-end collaboration tools tailored to the unique requirements of this market. These are off the shelf solutions and through our workshops have discovered that some insurers have invested considerable efforts trying to adapt them to meet those requirements, without success. ARIES, in part, draws on the functionality of many such systems, making that and additional functionality available in one place.
ARIES has also been designed to work seamlessly with market platforms such as Delegated Contract and Oversight Manager (DCOM) and Delegated Audit Manager (DAMs). Future plans include integration with these market platforms.
Integration would bring benefits in keeping with the central aims of ARIES: to enable all aspects of DA stakeholder and contract relationships to be managed in one place and reduce the need for re-keying. For example, if an insurer was onboarding a TPA already registered with DCOM, which had all the relevant details, ARIES could extract those details, eliminating the need to manually enter them again. This further supports the market’s desire to reduce inaccuracy with the same verified and accurate data used by all parties throughout the process. Far from circumventing DCOM or other Lloyd’s systems, ARIES will supplement them and could help maximise their value as part of a dramatically more efficient and integrated approach. ARIES will, for example, soon be able to conduct deeper due diligence than market standards require, but which is sometimes required by carriers and other stakeholders.
By providing complete visibility to all parties, ARIES will greatly reduce the error, complexity and inefficiency that for too long have dogged the DA market.
ARIES is the first major product to be developed and tested at Ecliptic’s recently launched Inov8ionLab on 24 Lime Street. Do drop in for a complimentary coffee or a beer if you would like to know more. Alternatively, to organise a demonstration for you and your team, send us a reply or book a time slot here.