Xchanging adds functionality for ILW’s and other Index based products

Insurance and reinsurance market focused technology provider Xchanging plc has updated its reinsurance deal placement and distribution platform to include index-based products, such as industry loss warranties (ILW’s).

In response to feedback from a number of reinsurance carrier, ILS Funds and its first subscribing broker partner, TigerRisk Partners, Xchanging has rapidly iterated a number of new features into its flagship multi-broker globalREmarket platform.

The reinsurance deal distribution platform name has also been changed, from globalRemarket to X-gRm. At launch the platform promised to offer “a single online repository for brokers to quickly distribute risk information in a consistent format to world-wide reinsurance carriers.”

So essentially that was a way to ‘upload’ a reinsurance deal and have it distributed out to potential carriers and markets, in order to enhance and improve the traditional syndication process.

Now, the platform has been enhanced with a live marketplace functionality for indexed products such as Industry Loss Warranties.” Xchanging says that the focus will be on providing “a streamlined, efficient alternative to existing processes.”

A “live marketplace” sounds intriguing. According to Xchanging and its first subscribing broker partner TigerRisk it will be able to support trading of ILWs and other index based insurance or reinsurance products as catastrophe events, such as hurricanes, are in progress.

The system will also live-distribute a potential transaction out to reinsurance markets, collateralized and ILS funds that showed interest in index products, which could enhance the distribution and syndication process for the ILW market and other index-linked re/insurance structures.

The platform will also support parametric index products, as well as other re/insurance products that can be based on an index (weather-index etc), and we should expect future iterations of X-gRm to develop further ILS-type placement and trading capabilities as well.

X-gRm will also aggregate and provide access to RSS and Twitter feeds from the platform dashboard, providing constant updates from numerous leading market sources including AIR and RMS, providing users with a centralised resource for relevant market data and information.

Nick Lamb, Director of Broking Services at Xchanging commented; “We’re excited to see the continued use and expansion of X-gRm beyond the initial renewal cycle and delighted to be able to respond to user feedback and release the new functionality so soon. We look forward to working with the market participants to continue developing the platform.”

Since its launch in March 2015 the platform has over 600 users from 130 reinsurance carriers, collateralized markets and ILS funds that have signed up to use it.

It now seems likely that, if the X-gRm platform can gain traction with index deals, ILW’s and other forms of products that can be traded in a live market, the insurance-linked securities (ILS) managers and investors not already on the platform will increasingly seek to sign up too.