What to do and when?

• Use the PRR Final Recommendations (here) and the latest CDR specification (here) to get details of PRR for every field in the CDR so that you understand where your organisation’s responsibilities will lie. Depending on your organisation’s role in the placement structure, there will be differences: lead vs. follow insurer, Lloyd’s syndicate vs. company market. If you have an internal broker, your internal broker must follow the steps assigned to brokers.

• Use the latest CDR and CRP specifications (here) to map the CDR fields to fields in your internal systems to identify the upstream systems that will feed the creation and approval of the CDR fields you are responsible for and the downstream systems that will use the complete CDR. Remember to include all of your policy admin systems as well as different IT systems used by other teams.

• Engage with your placing platform providers and broking partners to find out their plans to submit the CDR. Check if they intend to cover all CDR fields and the complete CDR submission journey. If there are any gaps, document them and consider what platforms and processes you will use to manage the complete CDR workflow.

• Map your internal business processes and RACI for creating and approving CDR fields. Include manual business processes and technical processes. Include all scenarios of different systems used by different teams. Note that changes to your internal processes may arise from having to provide fields that you don’t usually provide today, e.g. accounting and tax submission.

  • Other market participants may not adopt the CDR at the same time as you.

  • The CDR process will only work if all participants (broker and all insurers) on a policy have adopted the CDR and the Process, Roles and Responsibilities, regardless of whether this is via Placement Platforms, API or off-platform routes (TBC).

  • If at least one participant on a policy has not adopted the CDR, then the policy will have to be placed without a CDR, and the premium will be processed manually by Velonetic (previously London Market Joint Ventures). You will still receive your Accounting & Settlement messaging in your preferred format.

  • Insurers will be able to retrieve their complete and valid CDRs via REST API.

• Consider whether to adopt the CDR in a big bang approach, by different lines of business, by different placing platforms or by different books of business (Lloyd’s vs. Company Market)

• Complete training needs analysis and identify the target audiences.

• Assign resources and complete process and system training.

• Consider how many resources you will need to complete your creator and approver responsibilities for the CDR and what departments they need to be part of.

• Consider how to retrieve the CDR data and how to use the data recorded in the CDR in your downstream processes.

The introduction of ACORD EBOT/ECOT FA & TA messaging should significantly benefit your processes, e.g., solving problems related to unreconciled transactions and unallocated cash, with message content changes, additional process steps and the separation of TA and FA messages. Before adoption, it is critical to:

• Map your current claim management, premium and claim accounting & settlement, and associated business and technical processes: transaction reconciliation, cash allocation, claims agreement, etc.

  • Map existing data dependencies from EDI, CWT or Writeback messages (phase one) to fields in your systems/processes.

  • Identify and map other data inputs needed to complete your processes.

• Undertake impact and/or gap analysis on the EBOT/ECOT message specifications, considering your current process dependencies. Downstream process requirements will need to be considered, not just the immediate transaction processing touchpoints.

  • Review GAP analysis and assess the specifications of supplementary APIs from IPOS and ICOS (once published) for missing data dependencies. 

• Define your to-be business processes, starting with the EBOT and ECOT processes from the specifications on the ACORD website (here) and the information from Velonetic on how these processes will work in the context of syndicated business (once released).

  • Other market participants may not adopt phase two at the same time as you. Specifically, you will have dependencies on brokers, so study the phase two interoperability scenarios you need to support.

  • Talk to your brokers to understand their EBOT/ECOT adoption intentions and timelines.

  • For messaging, you are not expected to depend on other insurers. Each organisation will have their own notification preferences, which will be unaffected by other organisations on the policy or claim.

  • If there are any gaps, identify the process you will follow to incorporate these fields manually.

• You are likely to have existing vendor platforms that must be updated to handle EBOT and ECOT messaging. Engage with your system vendors (PAS, CAS, finance systems, etc.) on version and support capabilities and timelines to adopt the EBOT & ECOT messaging and the supplementary API integration from IPOS and ICOS where needed.

• Whilst not essential, it is recommended that you review or establish your enterprise integration and API strategies. Adopting phase two will require broader API handling as the early steps in market digitisation would benefit from a coordinated approach across your business.

• The Adoption of phase two end–to–end is unlikely to be a big-bang approach for many participants. You should start planning how your organisation will transition and how you will handle mixed-mode operations from both technical and business process perspectives.

  •  Whilst it will be possible to adopt phase two partially, e.g., by lines of business or process area (placement vs. premium vs. claims), it can quickly get very complicated, with some approaches requiring a lot of manual tasks and impacting operational efficiency.
     

• The changes provide an opportunity to revamp the associated process, which could significantly impact your staff and operations partners.

  • Plan the people changes across initial, partial, and final phase two market states.

  • Complete training needs analysis and identify the target audience.

  • Assign resources and complete process and system training.

  • Consider how many resource profiles will change initially when the market is split between phase one and two adoption and in the longer-term phase two scenario.