Aon's Special Delivery

Aon has now extended its use of RI3K to include its specialty and direct divisions as well as treaty reinsurance.

The intention is to make the majority of large commercial business distributed by Aon from its London operations become electronic.

Aon began the process of migrating to more streamlined paperless distribution earlier this year, after it had successfully connected its own contract production system to the RI3K Marketplace. Contracts created inside Aon are offered to markets via the RI3K service without rekeying. The RI3K service allows the broker to select the relevant markets for the contract, and to manage the transaction through binding, signing down and endorsement. The signed contract is then passed back to Aon's system and the ACORD standard trading data is sent to the underwriter systems.

"We are re-engineering our distribution and placement process to support market-wide modernisation," said Ian Summers, Director of Change Strategy, Aon. "It follows the excellent progress we have made in reinsurance, and now we are extending these benefits to the rest of our clients' business."

"Information that used to take months to circulate around the market can now reach all parties in the blink of an eye, and can be processed without vans or multiple data entry with all the mistakes and high costs that these incur. It's an inevitable and necessary evolution," he added.

"A record of the full placement process and audit trail of all transactions is accessible for the underwriters. As soon as they are agreed, signed lines are notified without delay to underwriters," commented Peter Dobbs CEO of Aon Marine.

"It also provides carriers with greater certainty around the contract, and eliminates the cost and possible errors associated with manual re-keying. This, in turn, reduces the potential for degradation of information provided to underwriters."

RI3K launches innovative Premium Service

From January 2008 this Premium Service will allow users to connect to RI3K over a privately owned and managed network, as an alternative to the public Internet. The Premium Service runs at faster guaranteed speeds and will make a noticeable difference to the user experience, reducing file download times which plague the public Internet. The Premium Service also offers enhanced user security, as files are on a private network and are protected from Internet threats such as cyber terrorism.

"We are more than comfortable with the Internet as it operates today, and with what it offers our users," says RI3K's Kelly Fegan. "However, this is about ensuring we have an offering that matches the standards demanded in other financial sectors, where international corporations expect bulletproof security for their data, and lightning quick service for their users."

Putting a private network between our applications and our customers means private security keys currently in place for users connecting via the Internet may no longer be necessary. This will improve ease of use and access speeds without exposing any data to unnecessary risk."

For more information regarding pricing or implementation guidance please call or email:

Kelly Fegan
Executive Director
+44 (0) 20 7400 3510

City consortium takes control of RI3K

Two days shy of its 7th anniversary, RI3K entered an exciting era under new ownership.

A consortium led by Michael Spencer, the Group Chief Executive of ICAP plc, and the US Hedge Fund investment company Eton Park bought the majority control from founding investors Brit Insurance Holdings plc. Investment banking and broking group Numis Corporation and Neil Eckert, Chief Executive of the Climate Exchange, have also become significant shareholders.

Oliver Hemsley, CEO of Numis said: "RI3K is the only trading service to serve the entire sector, as it is able to handle the whole risk placement process electronically from data collection prior to placement, through quote, bind and endorsement. We think that RI3K is poised to quickly become the market standard. Pressures are mounting in the industry to make business practices more efficient and cost effective. Contract certainty and the need for clear audit trails following regulatory investigations add further to RI3K's value proposition. I am very pleased that Numis is able to participate directly in assisting this exciting industry development."

Michael Spencer said: "It is very exciting that this investment will help take RI3K on to the next stage of its development. The insurance market is primed and ready for paperless trading and we can help RI3K add real value to the global insurance marketplace."