Ebix Europe Announces Development of New Electronic Placing Solution to Support London Market and Global Digitisation Initiatives

Alternative, independent Platform Addresses Growing Concern and Uncertainty in the Market Surrounding Electronic Placement of Risk

London Market technology specialist Ebix Europe announces today that it is designing and developing a new electronic trading platform, PlacingHub, that will offer an alternative to the recently announced PPL “NextGen” platform.

Developed by Ebix Europe’s in-house experienced specialists, PlacingHub delivers an enhanced electronic placing platform and, from the outset, will offer users the equivalent functionality already contained within PPL as a minimum requirement.

In addition, there is a redesigned user interface, providing a more intuitive experience that allows insurance practitioners the flexibility to adjust to a remote/office working environment, as well as other workflow enhancements.

James Pring, Head of Sales at Ebix Europe, said:

“As many people are aware, 90% of the risks placed in the London Market are currently conducted by a platform that is underpinned by Ebix Europe, which owns and provides the technology, support and training, in addition to storing users’ data securely. The new platform recently announced by PPL will not be underpinned by Ebix Europe and, as it is to be built from scratch, it will not possess the features and continuity that users are familiar with.

We believe there should be an option for the London Market to be able to continue to benefit from the investment of the last five years – but with the opportunity to build on those successes rather than begin again from an unproven alternative platform.

During the last 20 years, Ebix Europe has showcased its proven track record when it comes to the delivery of functionally-rich, London Market specific applications including Marketplace, UMGOnline, Lime-St and EbixExchange – and all of these platforms have become integral to the way risks are bound electronically in the London Market today.”

Due to go to market in 2022, technological features within PlacingHub will include customisable BI/MI interfaces, which will enable users to analyse, interpret and export data in real time; an alternative route to enable brokers to create an MRC (Market Reform Contract) in the platform via the product builder or digitise an existing slip, further allowing the creation of structured data at source which has long been a market goal, while being compliant with the CDR (Core Data Record) / MRC guidelines. In addition to this, PlacingHub will be supported with APIs for both the brokers and carriers to move them several steps closer to the goal of straight-through-processing.