Getting Left Behind is Closer than You Think

We’ve been making huge strides with the Insurance Exchange since our launch last year and we have tremendous confidence in our platform.  It’s also comforting to get reassurance from others in the form of their actions that we’re on the right track.

In addition to our customers and their success with the Exchange, reassurance comes of late from one of the top three US brokers, Willis Group, who just announced the launch of Willplace, a proprietary insurance placement platform.  Among its key features is  a “matching algorithm to correlate insurer risk appetites with specific client risks and matches clients with appropriate insurers”.

Sound familiar?  If you’ve read this blog or are familiar with the Insurance Exchange it should.  Willis follows Marsh and Aon in launching their own platform that enables them to better evaluate “such factors as price competitiveness, claims service and underwriting focus, among others.”

Can you afford the same kind of platform and tools those organizations obviously feel compelled to build to stay competitive?   Likely not by yourself.   And frankly, if every broker built their own solution, each carrier would be forced to deal with something different for each of their distribution partners –much the way brokers have to deal with unique submission paths for each of their markets.  Frustration and inefficiency would be compounded.

So for those who are not Willis, Marsh or Aon, the LexisNexis Insurance Exchange offers precisely the type of insurance placement solution that the big three are building themselves but cost is spread across participants.   Approximately 70 brokers and carriers have opted to participate in the Insurance Exchange to date as paying members.  Another 300 markets participate as invitees of brokers.  These members obtain access to a cloud-based collaborative technology that represents the collective thoughts and energy of the entire group as opposed to the invention of a single entity.

That is, in fact, the whole vision behind the Insurance Exchange and why the CIAB has long searched for a partner like LexisNexis to bring it to fruition for its members and the rest of the industry:  there is a  need to come together to create a common solution for the inefficiency and redundant processing  that characterizes insurance placement for carriers and brokers.

So while we are confident that Willis could effectively use our solution, it is enlightening that we are seemingly in agreement on many of the fundamental values and nature of a solution.  But ultimately, there cannot be a plethora of solutions.  Those few with the means may try their own, but are limited to their own experience and capability.  The LexisNexis solution benefits from the collective thoughts of many brokers as well as carriers and is open and affordable to all.

One of our tag lines this year has been “Don’t get left behind”.  If Willis, Marsh and Aon think they need a placement platform, why don’t you?  Can you afford not to take a look at a solution?  Why risk getting left behind?