Media
Xchanging Announces Successful Convergence of London Claims Systems
01 Jul 2003
Xchanging Ins-sure Services, a leading provider of outsourced services to the insurance industry, announces today the successful implementation of its claims systems convergence project, one of the largest projects undertaken in the London market involving 140 Xchanging experts and absorbing the equivalent of 46 man-years.
The project, designed to replace COSS (Claims Office Support System) - the legacy Lloyd's market electronic claims system used by Xchanging - with CLASS (Claims Loss Advice and Settlement System) is the first step in the convergence programme that will provide a single claims and single premiums system for the whole of the London Market to support the LMP claims protocols. The system was successfully implemented on 2 July 2003.
CLASS was identified as the most appropriate platform for future claims processing for the London Market in 2001 and work began at Xchanging in Spring 2002 to converge the two systems. Around 140 Xchanging experts were involved in the convergence project, spending a combined 29 man-years on the analysis, design and development phases. Xchanging worked with 23 software houses and end-users through the acceptance testing phase, and 17 man-years were spent on internal system and user-testing.
The converged system went live without any significant issues and all open claims data held in COSS relating to existing claims has been converted to the new system free of errors. All closed claims data is currently being converted, and once completed COSS will be shut down completely. At no time during the testing and implementation phases did any current users of CLASS experience any downtime or disruption to their business.
John Benjamin, Managing Director of Xchanging Ins-sure Services said: "To put this tremendous achievement into context, this programme is one of the largest systems projects ever attempted in the London market. Its success is testament to the hard work and dedication of the whole convergence team, as well as the rigour of the extensive acceptance testing that we undertook with the market."
The web browser-based version of CLASS in use within Xchanging Ins-sure Services and Xchanging Claims Services today harnesses new technology to allow Xchanging to improve the validation, and therefore the quality, of data input and will ultimately host a platform for Electronic Claim files. Embedded system rules and derivation of data has enabled streamlining of business processes, minimising technician intervention. This in turn enables increased automation and reduces duplication of data input, thereby ensuring data integrity.
Additionally, the separate settlement process within COSS has been eliminated and the correction procedures simplified and standardised. However, brokers need make no change to their working practices, and should present files to Xchanging in the same manner as occurs today.
Convergence presented the opportunity to identify areas for improvement, and Xchanging consulted representatives from the Lloyd's market claims systems user groups and claims practitioners to achieve this. Roy Laker, Programme Director of the London Market Principles programme, said: "This project was born from a shared determination that the London insurance market modernises its systems and processes. The vision of the Claims Process Committee was always that we should have one claims processing platform, and I am pleased to say we have now reached that goal."
It is Xchanging's plan to continue to support discussions with the Lloyd's Market Association to develop fully functional claims files using a central market repository and an enhanced Java platform version of CLASS for the Lloyd's community. It is anticipated this version will deliver benefits to all communities, allowing concurrent access to a central repository for all authorised parties.