Todd Lynady, Global Head of Insurance at LiquidX, outlines the ways in which the fintech solutions provider is charting a new path in the digital transformation of trade credit insurance and changing how policies are purchased and managed across the entire value chain.

 

We have all been anticipating a digital revolution in trade credit insurance. Like much of B2B trade finance and working capital management, the complex and highly administrative process of requesting, securing and managing policies has been difficult to streamline and efficiently scale.

Until now. LiquidX’s InBlock Digital Policy Management solution offers a new way for trade credit insurance to be sold, bought, managed and integrated into a company or bank’s larger financial ecosystem. Managing policies or a portfolio of policies via emails and spreadsheets is now replaced with an intuitive online portal available to any stakeholder in the value chain.

According to a recent study by McKinsey & Company, five technology trends, individually and in combination, will have a “seismic impact” on the insurance industry, making it “bear little resemblance to today”.1 The analysis notes that five rapidly accelerating trends are poised to reshape the insurance landscape. LiquidX is at the forefront of this technological revolution.

 

  1. Distributed infrastructure: Distributed systems, such as the cloud, have been adopted as a standard business practice globally, a strategy that has been validated in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The cloud revolution has allowed for reliability, scalability and flexibility, both in terms of launching new products and servicing clients.
  2. Next level automation: Process automation streamlines system workflows through automation, increasing response time, decreasing the chance for errors, and delivering cost savings.
  3. Network connectivity: Connecting networks results in two significant breakthroughs: it dramatically increases the speed of service delivery, and enables a view across the enterprise, releasing data that was previously stuck in silos.
  4. Trust architecture: Connecting data and processes across the insurance ecosystem requires technology that safeguards critical, sensitive information as it is passed between carrier, broker, and policyholder. Distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain enable validation and visibility from all sides.
  5. Applied artificial intelligence (AI): AI is the ability of computers to ‘think’ and learn, making smart systems even smarter by recognising patterns and becoming more predictive.

 

InBlock Digital Policy Management leverages all these technologies and more. We start by digitising an insurance policy and the assets it covers (ie, invoices, etc), turning them into lines of code and into smart contracts. Once this occurs the policy terms and conditions are self-executing and dynamically interact with other smart contracts. We use a variety of connective technologies that enable ‘digital handshakes’ between the various parties – carriers, brokers and policy holders – to exchange data and store it on the blockchain, where it is made visible to the relevant counterparties. With workflows and information now interconnected across the entire trade credit insurance ecosystem, richer data can be generated to help inform risk management and other corporate decisions.

InBlock Digital Policy Management will have a transformative impact on several key areas of trade credit insurance while delivering users up to five times return on investment.

 

Obtaining a quote is now more streamlined and the sales cycle of issuing a policy is substantially reduced

Getting a policy in place is typically a long, tedious and multi-step process. In many cases there are upwards of 30 touch points between a submission and policy issuance. Most brokers still attach an application to an email and send it to 10 or more carriers. Underwriters review submissions and undertake an internal workflow to log the submission into their system. At the same time, the underwriter must manage an external workflow to clarify submissions, request additional information, or quote in response to brokers. Once all responses are received, the broker painstakingly collates each carrier’s proposal and manually re-enters this data into an excel spreadsheet or other internal system, which is then presented to the prospective insured. This is an incredibly inefficient, manual and resource-intensive process that some brokers estimate takes up 40% of their time and as long as four to six weeks.

The LiquidX digital trade credit insurance solution gives brokers and insurance companies the power to streamline these manual administrative tasks through digitisation. Once the process is digitised, the back and forth of emails and the associated time delay is replaced with real-time access to underwriter decisions. With quotes now online, the broker or agent can easily access underwriter responses with a few clicks of a mouse.

By moving this process online, the sales cycle is significantly reduced, and valuable data is captured which can help inform future business decisions. For instance, this information can be used to track conversion rates, better understand propensities to buy, estimate portfolio retention, and assist with resource allocation.

 

Automated policy management ensures compliance and improves risk management

Digitisation converts the policy into a smart contact that enables brokers and insureds to replace manual, resource-intensive policy management and compliance processes with automation. With digitised policies, participants can quickly verify that accounts receivable are eligible for coverage, confirm debtor authenticity via direct API to credit bureaus like Dun & Bradstreet, track performance of each covered receivable, and automate reporting requirements.

In the context of an individual policy, streamlined workflows and better data captured will undoubtedly drive more profitable policy administration. When digital policies are centralised into a single platform and data is viewed across a portfolio of policies, the value multiplies substantially. Data from each ‘smart’ policy provides aggregated position and risk monitoring – across debtors, insurers, policyholders or geographies – allowing brokers, carriers and insured parties to monitor their insured portfolio from the highest level down to the most granular level. InBlock Policy Management redefines “the big picture” and brings an unprecedented degree of transparency to trade credit insurance portfolios.

The challenges of the past two years have emphasised the need for a coherent digital strategy, and clients are demanding more from their brokers and insurers. Our InBlock Digital Policy Management solution not only increases efficiency and scalability for all constituents, but more importantly, the transparency it provides mitigates operational risks across the value chain.

In the past few years our industry has experience fraud situations that have exposed weaknesses in the market. While not many in number, these situations might have been avoided with greater transparency into underlying invoices and risks. With InBlock Digital Policy Management, insured parties and their lenders gain confidence that a policy will perform, insurers gain a real-time view of actual value at risk, and brokers benefit from reduced E&O exposure by the automation of critically important policy compliance requirements.

 

The future is now

The McKinsey report notes that to survive, “incumbents will have to adopt their operating models, products and core processes to a new reality”. For trade credit insurance, the time is now.

At LiquidX, we are charting a new path in the digital transformation of trade credit insurance, completely changing how policies are purchased and managed across the entire value chain. Our aim is to help grow the market for brokers, insured parties, and carriers by improving access to coverage, providing transparency, and managing the often-cumbersome policy management, compliance and claims processes.

 

Reference

  1. ‘How top trends will transform insurance’, McKinsey and Company, 30 September 2021

 

Todd Lynady is Managing Director and Global Head of Insurance at LiquidX. Reach Todd at tlynady@liquidx.com or +1 718-866-8454.