SWIFT signs agreement with major reinsurance industry players
Firms to go live with shared platform in April 2010
Published on 18 September 2008
The project partners include SWIFT, the global insurance standards organisation ACORD, the reinsurance companies Swiss Re, Munich Re and Scor as well as the reinsurance brokers Aon, Benfield and Willis.
Currently, interactions between (re)insurance market players are predominantly paper-based, even though ‘paper’ may be transmitted in the form of an e-mail attachment. Data relating to offering, placing, accounting et cetera may be entered into various IT systems many times along the value chain.
In late 2007, a group of global reinsurers and brokers started the ‘Rüschlikon Initiative’, the aim of which is to build a shared industry solution for electronic data transmission. SWIFT joined the initiative in January 2008 to provide both the platform and network for premium and claims accounting transactions.
“Historically the insurance industry has been viewed as lagging banks in information technology,” says Peter Arbenz, head of reinsurance information management at Swiss Re, which has been a SWIFT member for the past six years. “Ordinarily we would go to tender to find a technology partner but since SWIFT is already the banks’ own platform we felt we could do no better than follow their example.”
He adds: “We wanted to work with an organisation that already had a track record for reliability and security as well as innovation – which would be a far easier sell to our internal decision-makers. So far we are impressed with SWIFT’s enthusiasm and feel sure we have the right partner.”
Lázaro Campos, CEO, SWIFT , who signed the agreement on behalf of SWIFT, added: “Our commitment at SWIFT is to find ways to minimise any implementation challenges and work to optimise the existing infrastructure. We will build on our elements of community, standards and platform to help the Rüschlikon Initiative.”