Higinio Iglesias, CEO of ebroker: "Our support was unconditional in 2005 and continues to be so almost two decades later"
I still remember perfectly when in July 2005 in E2K we signed with TIRE adhesion to the SIAC sectoral standardization project, and immediately afterwards we incorporated fifty brokers and brokerages users of our ebroker platform into their operations. Almost two decades of work and commitment of many people and companies in our sector with the aim that brokers and insurers have a common language to understand each other efficiently in their day-to-day lives.
Since 2014 the sector has articulated around EIAC the intended standard that has made it possible to advance, not without difficulty in that common language that brokers and insurers need to communicate and exchange information. EIAC as a standard is already a reality and represents the achievement of a long-awaited and worked objective and sector challenge.
EIAC has to be a standard every day more standard and get rid of some limitations and corsets that inevitably were part of its origin.
The standard is already a reality and is progressing, but we must ask ourselves an obligatory question. Is this standard assuming a real lever for sectoral standardization? Because obviously one thing is to have a standard, we have it, and another thing is to deploy a standardization action that sectorally materializes its potential virtues.
Achieving fluid and efficient relationships between brokers and insurers does not depend only on having a single language or data map, it fundamentally depends on the processes and business rules that are articulated around it to achieve the real and effective deployment of functionalities that provide brokers and insurers with the ability to simplify work procedures, improve product quality, reduce costs and facilitate continuous improvement of business functionalities.
And this should be the sectoral challenge, to turn EIAC into a standardization authority that applies a wrapper of business processes and rules to the map of data that is exchanged. And in this new scenario, a project like TOP, an infrastructure that centralizes data traffic by validating the integrity and rules of the standard, while defining processes and applying the business rules that as such are incorporated into the operations, that is, that develops the standardization action from the convention defined for EIAC.
And that, in my opinion, must be, and not another, the role and function of CIMA and its governing authority.
There are many challenges that the sector faces in terms of digital transformation for the coming years, tremendously attractive and palatable challenges from different points of view, some of them with a high component of strategic business opportunity. However, we must be respectful and aware that EIAC-CIMA and the standardization movement that is articulated around it, must be precisely that, a free, open and democratic standardization movement, leaving it in the hands of the companies specialized in technology for the sector the contribution of added value based on a plural, independent market and in free competition.
It is possible that in the evolution of EIAC and CIMA, as part of the same sectoral standardization project, experiences and success stories of the insurance industry in terms of standardization in more developed markets than ours should be taken as a reference.
Since 1970, ACORD has been an industry leader in identifying ways to help make improvements throughout the insurance value chain. Implementation of the ACORD standards has improved data quality and flow, increasing efficiency and achieving billions of dollars in savings for the global insurance industry. Headquartered in New York and London, ACORD involves more than 36.000 participating organizations in 100 countries, including insurance and reinsurance companies, agents and brokers, software providers, financial services organizations, and industry associations. ACORD is a good reference. We must not lose sight of it, some issues do not need to be reinvented.
E2K's commitment to standardization remains unchanged. Our support was unconditional in 2005 and continues to be so almost two decades later. Because now more than ever, all industry players must be aligned and committed to what must be a real challenge of the moment, and which is none other than standardizing digital transformation processes. It is not possible to speak of a digital transformation process that places the Spanish insurance sector at a competitive level with the reference international markets without a standard that normalizes and makes efficient the relationship between all the sectorial actors.
We are on the road, let's keep moving forward.
Higinio Iglesias
CEO of E2K and CEO of ebroker
Article published in Community of insurance the 12 of September of 2021.
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