C Consulting – part of the Engineering Group that with a turnover of over 1.4 billion euros and 13 thousand employees is one of the leading Italian IT groups – is a company specialized in insurance and reinsurance that has developed XLayers, an innovative, simple and intuitive software, which allows end-to-end management of the entire active/passive reinsurance process of insurance companies and groups completely focused on the needs of the individual customer. Thanks to this cutting-edge solution – which has radically innovated the complex and delicate reinsurance process, automating and managing in a precise and intelligent way the enormous amount of data and technical accounting information exchanged between insurance companies and reinsurers – the Genoese company has managed to assert its leadership in a highly competitive market, thanks to a team of 50 highly qualified and motivated professionals who also work with players from other foreign markets. Aldo Capurro Founder and CEO of this all-Italian excellence, and Raffaele Riva Head of P&C Business Management Italy of Swiss Re – since 1863 one of the world’s leading reinsurance groups, operating through a network of about 80 offices around the world – tell us about Ruschlikon Italia (RIGI), the Italian Project for the Digitization of Technical-Accounting transmissions between Insurers, Brokers and Reinsurers (based on ACORD platform) created in order to make accounting exchanges in the national and international insurance market more direct and simple. The Ruschlikon Initiative in Italy is promoted by RIGI (Ruschlikon Implementation Group Italia), which includes Scor, Munich Re, Hannover Re, Mapfre Re, Gen Re, Guy Carpenter in the Executive Committee and in the Working Group sees insurers such as HDI Italia (ex Amissima), Axa Italia, Unipol Sai, Europe Assistance, Società Cattolica di Assicurazioni, Sara, in addition to the support of ANIA together with Aon Re, Guy Carpenter as brokers and the main IT providers operating in Italy (DXC, MSG-SAP).
by Roberta Imbimbo
Dr. Capurro ,what is Ruschlikon/ACORD?
About 14 years ago, more precisely in 2008, the world’s largest insurers, brokers and reinsurers met at the Swiss Re congress centre in Ruschlikon, a small village near Zurich, to discuss how to make the processes of the insurance market more direct and efficient and in particular the digital exchange of data between insurance companies and reinsurance thanks to the adoption of ACORD Standards (these are international standards already widely used in the USA). Thanks to the concrete and pressing interest of all market players in accelerating the digital revolution in the reinsurance sector, as part of this innovative and visionary project sub-groups of work have been created at local level, among which the Italian one has been entrusted with the ambitious goal of mapping and standardizing all end-to-end processes ( i.e. from the original phase of taking out the policy in the primary market to that of reinsurance). Ruschlikon Italia was therefore born in the spring of 2019 thanks to the precious collaboration of two Italians who have become the pioneers of this important initiative for the Italian market – Raffaele Riva, as representative of Swiss Re, and Aldo Capurro, as CEO of C Consulting – who were asked to transform the reinsurance market facilitating dialogue between all local actors in the ecosystem. How so? Adopting a single global standard to standardize, speed up and simplify the digital exchange of technical, accounting and financial information, data and documents between insurers, reinsurers, brokers and IT providers. With the aim of revolutionizing the logic of Ruschlikon that in the rest of the world is based on peer to peer connections between the systems of the Companies (a logic that in our opinion had strong operating limits), Raffaele and I have therefore created a sort of local Executive Committee of the major reinsurers based in Italy, and a working group that sees, among others, the participation of ANIA, in order to analyze, census and validate all the reinsurance templates, i.e. all the types of communications that can occur between the various market players, coming to create and define concept maps to move smoothly within this sector (a sort of Treccani of reinsurance at the level of technical accounting communication ). In May 2020, our standards were validated. On September 21, 2020, the Global Ruschlikon/ACORD Steering Committee, composed of the world’s largest Insurers, Brokers and Reinsurers, gave the green light to the implementation of the model for the Italian Market by welcoming the business case proposed by us and in 2021, after two years of intense work (often hindered by the numerous operational limits resulting from Covid), the first centralized digital platform ACORD to which today you can hook the entire Market (Hub) in order to send and receive data and technical-accounting information of reinsurance. A sort of reinsurance ecosystem able to offer all the possible ways of connecting from the most advanced (gateways, APIs) to the most traditional ones (Excel files that can be converted into ACORD language), to which you can also interconnect internationally, once the similar projects that are developing in parallel in other countries will be implemented, so that the digital exchange of technical-accounting data can become fast, secure and according to a standard shared worldwide.
Dr. Riva, how does this digital transmission process work in practice? Is it easy to use? Has the market shown enthusiasm?
Absolutely, beyond expectations. On April 7, 2022, the first digital transmission of a technical account, carried out in real time, was presented to the companies that adopt XLayers and on April 12 to the other companies in the Italian market. It was sent by SACE BT (which I want to thank for its willingness to be the forerunner in this initiative) via XLayers, passing through the platform created by ASG (ACORD+ Solutions Group), up to Swiss Re which received and automatically acquired the message within its systems, which responded with feedback from live acceptance. Thanks to this test, the companies were able to appreciate the simplicity and speed of data transmission, in the entire round trip process everything took place in a few minutes, accelerating a process that would normally take at least 15/20 days. In addition, it is evident the effectiveness of a process designed to be audit-proof, internal and external. Needless to say, such transmissions are encrypted and made in full compliance with the requirements of the GDPR. This is obviously a real revolution, since the insurance industry finally has the opportunity to use a market hub to digitally exchange the technical-accounting data that all operators can access by speaking the same language in terms of standards that apply worldwide. All this so that those who join can benefit from unrepeatable and competitive conditions: no participation costs in Ruschlikon Italia (RIGI), no contribution to the creation of the platform, the first 4 million messages supported by the “Sponsors” from ACORD, Swiss Re, Munich Re, Hannover Re, Mapfre Re, AXA XL Re, Aon Re, Guy Carpenter, Willis Re (now Gallagher Re); cost “at full capacity” per message (once the 4 million messages are exhausted) extremely reasonable.
Swiss Re is already operating in this area as the Group is at the forefront of technological challenges, the use of big data and all innovations worldwide. An example is the interchange started last March with Aon Re which has equipped itself in Italy with the technology / systems necessary for this type of digital interaction and which dialogues with Swiss Re in the exchange of such data.
Thanks to your valuable contribution, our country is charting the path of the digital revolution in the reinsurance sector worldwide! Future goals?
The world’s largest reinsurers are actively working on the interconnection with the platform and Guy Carpenter also plans to become operational in this regard in 2023. Although at the moment Aon Re has started to send data in digital format to Swiss Re and others (Crédit Agricole, Elba Assicurazioni, Milanese Insurer) have instead agreed to be part of the data transmission tests through the Italian market hub, the main challenge for the near future is to widen the audience of companies interested in sharing this project, raising awareness among all stakeholders on the importance of adopting these standards, accelerating digitalization within the supply chain. Once the platform is populated by a fair number of participants, the next step will be the transition to blockchain technology.
For more info (https://www.cconsulting.it)
