Dom Sindall & Stephen Sheehan: Marsh Re: From days to minutes: rethinking facultative reinsurance (417)

Introduction 

Facultative reinsurance can give insurers the additional capacity they need to write risks they might otherwise decline. But for smaller, more transactional placements, its value increasingly depends on how quickly that capacity can be accessed. 

Joining Matthew Grant on the podcast, Dom Sindall, Head of Digital Broking, Facultative at Marsh Re, and Stephen Sheehan, Head of Analytics, Facultative at Marsh Re, explain how digital trading, automation and better data could reduce facultative placement times from days to hours or even minutes. 

Dom explains why much of the delay in facultative reinsurance comes not from the work itself, but from the elapsed time between people completing each stage of a placement. Removing some of those dependencies could make facultative reinsurance significantly more accessible for smaller risks, where speed can matter more than price. 

The discussion explores how advances in AI are helping automate another source of friction: insurance data. Stephen explains how extracting policy information from documents has become increasingly straightforward, while exposure data remains more challenging. Schedules of values (SOVs) can contain dozens of tabs, multiple currencies and inconsistent terminology, making ingestion, standardisation and quality control critical parts of the automation process. 

They also examine where humans should remain involved. Fully automated workflows offer greater speed, but Dom and Stephen explain why firms need to determine what level of data quality is ‘good enough’, where validation gates are required and which capabilities should be built internally or bought from technology partners. 

Looking ahead, Dom explains why the growth of digital trading could expand the facultative market itself. Reinsurers that invested early in data standards have been able to move quickly, while the next wave may increasingly look to partnerships to accelerate their own digital capabilities. 

In this episode you’ll learn: 

• Why speed is becoming increasingly important for smaller facultative placements 
• How automation could reduce placement times from days to hours or minutes 
• Why AI has made extracting policy data significantly easier 
• Why exposure data remains a more difficult automation challenge 
• How to decide where human validation belongs within automated workflows 
• Why ‘good enough’ data can be more commercially valuable than pursuing perfection 
• How insurers and brokers can approach build versus buy technology decisions 
• Why early investment in data standards is creating an advantage in digital trading 
• How reducing friction could help grow the facultative reinsurance market 

Book recommendations: 

• Stephen Sheehan: Don’t Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen 
• Dom Sindall: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen 

If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on LinkedIn. 

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