Exec Summary

Background

In January 2021, Dare engaged the global DA community of Coverholders, Managing Agents, Brokers, Claims specialists and independent Consultants to find out what they want the future of Delegated Authority to be, unconstrained by today’s model, methods and processes.

The focus of this engagement was not about digitising today's way of working, it was about re-thinking what we do, why we do it, and where the value is, creating a new vision for DA that re-imagines and digitises the business model to support growth and enable cost savings.

Between January and early March, we held 45 group workshops and 12 SME interviews with over 330 attendees across the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, supplemented by 4 online surveys with over 200 responses.

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Approach

Starting with a Discovery stage, we focussed on the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the different areas of the existing DA business model and the frustrations of each stakeholder group before moving to an Innovation stage where workshops become more tactical, identifying ideas to change the DA business model, and then evolving to prove these ideas and understand how they might fit together to create the vision for a re-imagined DA experience.

A number of key ideas to change the current DA business model were identified and discussed, joined together to create an end-to-end journey for DA community via a digital unified experience layer that provides:

• Hyper connectivity via API to synchronise data across multiple services and stakeholders at the right time.
• A single source of truth, that is traceable, controlled, and connected to businesses, products, and services.
• Interconnected operating model and services - driven by data, integration, and UX, removing the one size fits all barrier.
• Consistent access and integration to shield the customer from complexity and the use of multiple products & services

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Key ideas to change the current DA business model

Value driven remuneration & product servicing

Reduce acquisition costs, make distribution oversight real-time and create more cost-effective partner and product distribution options by:

• Making it easy for MAs and Coverholders to determine which elements of the product lifecycle they require the services of an intermediary for.
• Creating a product services tower that links costs to value, via fixed and % point remuneration.
• Making activities and associated costs transparent, captured consistently, and easily accessible/reportable to support cost and portfolio management.
• Creating a flexible and bespoke distribution model based on product need and partner value.

Digital distribution & partnership

Improve speed, quality & oversight of the deal by using digital tools and data to facilitate matching of programmes, enabling real-time and traceable online collaboration between involved parties by:

• Digitally connecting the distribution partners within aB2B e-trade facility & directory, creating a pre-placement marketplace for capacity, including Coverholders, Brokers, DCAs and MAs.
• Making data driven connections between all members of the value chain within a flexible distribution model, allowing Brokers to opt-in, opt-out, or stay informed.
• Creating a data led mechanism for offering and providing services and matching by stakeholder, to develop a value driven distribution chain and agreed ownership of pre-placement, placement, and post-placement activities.

Digital portfolio & performance oversight 

Reduce the current duplication of oversight activities to accelerate ongoing compliance and enhance performance of partners by:

• Establishing real-time oversight of delegated portfolio& performance management, enabling product risk assessment, underwriting, and servicing checks to be undertaken by Managing Agents in response to live events, including portfolio performance, risk mitigation, and authority and funding levels for claims payment.
• Continuously compiling data about each entity to create a set of performance ratings that can be used by the marketplace when deciding whether to collaborate, contract and transact together, doing so via the utilisation of existing rating and oversight policies (potentially A.M Best) and technologies (Lloyd's REG).

Loss prevention & Pro-active Claim Management

Enhance the claims experience within DA and increase loss mitigation and cost control through improved speed and agility of claim decision & payment and use of data and digital tools to improve pre-loss customer support by:

• Connecting claims partners with MAs, Brokers, Coverholders and DCAs at the point of proposition, linking risk and claims data via workflow to proactively manage exposures and the portfolio.
• Use a data driven oversight strategy of digital contract and terms, utilising technology to establish an automated assistant to manage authority and funding levels via exposure and loss data & history.
• Linking policy, claims and external event data to forecast exposure and impact and make this information accessible to DCAs and Coverholders to enable proactive and preventive customer interaction, guidance, and support. 

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Making this vision a reality

The LMA is constructively engaging Lloyd’s to conduct a detailed comparison of how closely the ideas from Dare align with the confirmed deliverables of the Future at Lloyd’s programme, developing an open, collaborative working relationship that allows the ideas from Dare to feed into FAL programme scoping.

Now more than ever, we need the continued support of you, the DA market, to get behind these ideas and show your support.

Be part of the revolution and help us to make this vision a reality. Onwards!