LONDON: Lloyd's of London has abandoned its much-touted electronic trading platform, Kinnect, installed at a cost of around 70 million dollars. Kinnect was intended to help modernise the world's largest insurance market through secure data transfer between underwriters and brokers.
In a letter to customers Tuesday, Kinnect's interim chairman Michael Dawson said Lloyd's is shutting down the platform. He said the platform was not optimal in ensuring more efficient business processes for the Lloyd's and London market.
The project had started some five years ago and had enabled brokers and underwriters to store information electronically instead of using paper files. The system was introduced with the aim of modernising the market and creating a paperless system.
Dawson cited the changing technology landscape as one of the reasons for the decision.
In September last year, Kinnect's executive chairman Iain Saville had put in his papers and on the same day chief executive Toby Davies also quit. Interestingly, Kinnect had only 21 of the 213 companies in the market signed up for the service.
Kinnect is known to employ a staff of around 50, but it is not known how many of them would lose jobs as a result of this decision.
Analysts blamed the mentality of the brokers and underwriters who cared little to make the market technology-based. There were complaints that the brokers and underwriters were not properly consulted by Lloyd's while developing Kinnect.
Dawson said in his letter that Lloyd's see its primary role as that of setting standards and not building infrastructure, although modernisation of the market is a necessity. He said Lloyd's will continue to work with the market in support of electronic trading.
Posted
on : Wed, 25 Jan 2006 09:15 GMT | Insurance News
By : Mark Richardson
|
