London, 05 June 2009 – ROOM Solutions today announced that it has demonstrated two-way integration with RI3K via the Lloyd’s Exchange. This follows on from leading the first successful exchange of business messages into a back office system via the Exchange.
This is a key milestone: it shows the market’s main e-placing trading platform integrated with a leading carrier software using the Lloyd’s Exchange for a true end-to-end process.
A quote request, with attached documents, was created interactively on RI3K’s Trading Platform and transmitted via the gateway to the Lloyd’s Exchange. At this stage, both the envelope and the business message were validated by the Lloyd’s Exchange and forwarded, via ROOM’s own internal Web Connectivity gateway, to arrive in ROOM’s ipf³ front end. Upon arrival into ipf³, the workflow and business logic features validated, prioritised and routed the message to the appropriate underwriter along with a link to the documents which had been stored in ipf3’s local document management system (DMS). A quote was then generated and sent back via the same route to RI3K, and ROOM’s policy administration system was updated automatically, eliminating the need to rekey.
“Room continues to increase its investments supporting the initiatives taken by Lloyd’s to strengthen the markets’ global position through technological advances,” said Ameet Dave, Commercial Director at ROOM Solutions. “This work, with RI3K and Web Connectivity, has shown how vendors working together can produce a seamless placing flow, allowing our customers to enhance their key underwriting processes”.
The product ‘ipf³ Placing’ from ROOM, demonstrates how a flexible technology framework like ipf³ can quickly deliver point solutions in response to market drivers. Ipf³ Placing has been developed to receive and send messages via the Lloyd’s Exchange or other hubs, or on a direct peer-to-peer basis. The automatic updating of the back end software is a step-change in the way that communications can be conducted to minimise the levels of human intervention.
“With the continued emphasis on market reform we are seeing the electronic transactional initiatives gathering momentum”, continues Ameet Dave. “Our groundbreaking technology ipf³ allows insurers to respond to such market level initiatives with unprecedented speed”.
Richard Milner, Product Director of RI3K said “The recent feedback from both the new Watertrace report and from IUA members asked for underwriter integrations to drive e-placing benefits to the carriers' side of the equation. With an integration between RI3K and Room, 60% of the Lloyd's market can now take data from e-trades straight into their back office. It is a ground breaking moment for market reform”.
“Web Connectivity is delighted that our Generic Messaging Gateway, EnabledB2B, has been used in this way to facilitate integration with underwriter systems,” said James Willison, Managing Director at Web Connectivity. “Again, Web Connectivity is working with other vendors in the market to ensure that the business benefits of ePlacing are realised”.
About ROOM Solutions Limited (www.roomsolutions.net)
ROOM Solutions Limited, a subsidiary of NIIT Technologies, is a leading supplier of solutions and services to the commercial insurance and reinsurance markets. The breadth and depth of product and service offerings, in combination with the vision and commitment, enables risk carriers to optimise the management and control of their operational efficiency, business line profitability, and respond to major upcoming market level changes.
For further information please contact Ashuveen Bhadal at Ashuveen.Bhadal@RoomSolutions.net or on 020 7667 8797.
About NIIT Technologies (www.niit-tech.com)
NIIT Technologies is a leading IT solutions organization, servicing customers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. It offers services in Application Development and Maintenance, Enterprise Solutions including Managed Services and Business Process Management to organizations in the Financial Services, Transportation, Retail and Distribution and Government sectors.
NIIT Technologies follows global standards of development, which includes ISO 9001:2000 certification, assessment at Level 5 of both SEI-CMMi version 1.2 and People-CMM frameworks and ISO 27001 information security management certification. NIIT Technologies’ Thailand operations are assessed at the international ISO 20000 IT management standards. NIIT Technologies’ subsidiaries, NIIT Smart Serve Limited and NIIT GIS Limited, offer Business Process Management and GIS Solutions, respectively.
About RI3K
RI3K was founded in May 2000 and has built the world’s only paperless trading platform for commercial insurance and reinsurance. It now has over 5500 users in 300 companies on its trading network, with 1700 underwriters inside Lloyd’s building alone. Its major liquidity providers are London brokers Aon and BMS, Ace, Brit Insurance and Aviva. In May 2007, ICAP’s Michael Spencer (through his IPGL investment vehicle) combined with the US Hedge Fund Eton Park to take majority control of RI3K.
About Web Connectivity Ltd - www.webconnectivity.co.uk
Web Connectivity, founded in 2003, focuses on enabling companies to exchange structured and/or unstructured information using ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) standards and other standards. Web Connectivity’s Generic Messaging Gateway, EnabledB2B, allows instant communication with other parties using the ACORD Messaging Service (AMS) and the Reinsurance and Large Commercial (“RLC”) and Document Repository Interface (“DRI”) standards.
Web Connectivity is the recipient of 22 awards from ACORD, including the following awards in 2008:
· Industry Leadership for Straight Through Processing Award
· Outsourcer Award
· Shared Service and/or Infrastructure Platform, Middleware Award