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Acturis plans to save commercial lines insurance industry £1 billion a year

08 May 2001

Some £1 billion a year could be saved in the commercial lines industry through more efficient transaction processing, according to Sir Brian Pitman, chairman of Acturis. Duplication, manual processes, errors and incompatible systems currently account for 34% of all premiums, he said, speaking at the launch of the new insurance technology service provider.

Acturis has evolved from a project called Riskline and consists of a partnership including insurers Norwich Union, AXA and Independent, brokers Smart & Cook and Bland Bankart, technology experts and a blue chip management team. Its solution, which it claims can reduced costs in the commercial lines industry by £1 billion a year, is to provide brokers with a web-based technology platform to support administration and give access to new services.

The solution is based one third on technology, one third on process redesign and one third on product and service innovation. It has five components:

Acturis Broker Trading Platform
A core back office system provided on an Application Service Provider (ASP) basis for daily operations, This core system is the product of many years of development and over £10m of investment.

Acturis Innovator
A mechanism to quickly create new products and services for brokers.

Acturis Connected Environment
An on-line environment to facilitate the passing of data and the exchange of structured risk information between brokers and insurers electronically. Connectivity with other industry facilities, such as Polaris for personal lines, is also contained in this component.

Acturis Information Provider An advanced management information system providing all partners with critical business information.

Acturis Task Manager A task management system supporting the various work processes within a brokerage, including the provision of the key productivity measures and service level information required to effectively manage the business.

The project is currently still in the development stages but the first version should be available in the early part of next year. By revealing the details now Acturis hopes to raise its profile in the market and to let brokers, currently faced with a range of technology choices, know that it is there.

The Jim Bannister Report


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