The art of longevity in reinsurance technology

Igor Best-Devereux, CEO and founder of specialist reinsurance technology firm eReinsure, explains the factors underpinning the platform’s 25-year history.

You founded eReinsure in 1999, did you imagine it would become an established player in the market?

We thought the market would adopt this networked technology faster, but there have been positive effects of a more gradual pace. Sticking with it for 25 years means we've been able to iterate, listen to clients and solve their needs. We're in a long-term business in reinsurance and you have to match the pace and realities of the market.

We've been around for a good amount of time, and we've learned what we need to learn. Our focus was initially on North America, where we started. We also have global clients and have had an office in London for 20 years. We've been a steady, reliable part of the fac market and this characteristic of consistency and stability has been important.

In prior interviews, you mentioned evolution rather than revolution as a guiding principle, can you elaborate on that?

Carriers have different needs, so we built a system with a good amount of flexibility. Internally, we call this configurability. Some carriers centralise their purchase of fac around a central team and concentrate that expertise, so our system needed to help in these circumstances.

Other companies have a more distributed process, so the system has to serve different roles for different users, with different permissions. It has to include a workflow that is flexible enough to meet their needs – that's been an important part of the evolution.

There’s now an increasing desire to deploy REST APIs that allow us to exchange information across the systems landscape used by our clients. Companies are getting familiar with APIs, but the experience can be different in each case. We've got users in more than 80 countries, and whether firms are big or small, this technology is becoming much more common. For us, it's a process of working step-by-step with each client to implement and configure that capability.

Is AI another big part of the client conversation?

Yes, but clients realise that they need to start by getting the data ready. Then, you can use that data as an asset. Just as we've seen with other technology during the past 25 years, the pace at which AI adds value to the reinsurance market will probably be slower than people imagine.

Who are some of the supporters who have had a major influence on the evolution of eReinsure?

In the late 1980s I worked for Alexander Howden, which ended up as part of Aon. Dennis Mahoney, who became chairman of Aon Global, was prepared to let younger people experiment with new ideas. In the late 1980s we experimented with PCs and modems to try to send slips between offices.

Another influential person was the late Tom Motamed, who at the time was COO at Chubb and later was CEO of CNA Financial. We were fortunate to get investment from Chubb and Tom’s focus was on what we could learn from new technology.

About 10 years ago we were acquired by Amwins, which under chairman Steve DeCarlo has created a culture where reinvesting is central to the business philosophy. We’ve been able to partner with Amwins in an autonomous way, where we’ve had support to continue updating the technology.

Why has eReinsure had longevity where others have failed?

A problem with introducing technology is that sometimes you try to satisfy everyone’s needs all at once, when what you really need is an anchor for an application. For us, this anchor was the carrier’s need for control over fac, and you work from there. Starting with a simple thesis was important.