Minutes of the IUG Council Meeting – 18 July 2007
Minutes of the IUG Council Meeting
Held at Leadenhall Street
18 July 2007
List of Attendees:
Great Lakes Graeme Walker (GW)
Novae Nigel Sheppard (NS)
QBE John Taylor (JT)
St Paul Andy Holman (AH)
Global Insurance Solutions Daryl Yeats (DY)
Alan Chisham (AC)
Sharon White (SW) (Minutes)
Apologies:
Everest Graham Titheridge (GT)
1. Chair
DY welcomed everyone to the meeting and asked if anyone would like to volunteer as Chair. After a brief discussion the Council advised that they would like to keep the meeting fairly short today and asked DY to act as Chair.
2. Previous Minutes
070312.001 DY – S R Bishop – Outstanding Payments
S R Bishop had left the IUG and were outstanding July and August 2006 payments (2 x £2,710.58). The outstanding payments had been pursued but it was thought unlikely that the funds would ever be received and the Council had agreed to write this off. DY confirmed that the funds had been written off.
070312.002 – SW – Direct Debits
AH had requested that Xchanging look into the possibility of setting up direct debits for the IUG account. DY said that as advised at the IUG meeting on 19 March 2007, this would involve a one-off cost for the software for this process and there would also be an additional transaction charge for each member payment per month. The IUG members had indicated that they would not be interested in pursuing this item.
070312.003 – SW – Development
NS had requested that future minutes include the “estimated date for delivery” for development items. DY confirmed that this is now included on the minutes.
070312.004 – AC – Upgrades
The upgrade procedure had been discussed at the meeting on 12 March 2007 and it had been suggested that steps could be put in place to further improve this process. The following items had been discussed:
1. Suggest to account managers that they run a pre-upgrade test on client’s database before release of PTF update.
2. Produce standard check lists for XGIS and IUG members to be completed prior to and during upgrade. The check list would include any difficulties had been encountered during past upgrades so that attention could be focused on these areas in particular.
3. Release notes – AC to investigate a way to make these more informative.
4. AC will update the developers’ checklist to ensure impact analysis of customer configurations are taken into account.
AC advised that there is currently a checklist in place for new installation/upgrades, and that he is currently working on including the items above in the existing checklist.
GW said that he had recently undertaken an upgrade and therefore it might be worthwhile if he and his colleague, Sue Talbot, went through the new template to check that it captured any areas where they had required guidance during the installation. DY/AC said that it would be very beneficial to have this input.
ACTION 070718.001 AC & GW
3. Treasurer’s Report
IUG Payments as at End June 2007
Abacus
Up to date
Axis
Up to date
Co-op
Up to date - Last payment was May. A refund needs to be made in June as Co-op did not change the standing order when their payments were reduced at start of 2007. Additionally Co-op has not stopped their standing order and have paid June/July. This will also need to be refunded. We have asked Co-op to confirm when their standing order has been cancelled so that a refund can be made,
Ecclesiastical
Up to date
Everest
Up to date – standing order 10p short each month (Have requested that this is amended)
Great Lakes
Up to date
HIH
Up to date
IGI
Up to date
Xchanging/Illium
Up to date
Liberty
Up to date
Limit
Up to date
Liberty Syndicates
Up to date
XL London
April , May, June outstanding 3 x £3722.52 = £11,167.56.
This has been chased up. XL have said that they have put April and May on BACS run – but there seems to be some problem.
XL Singapore
Up to date
XL Bermuda
Up to date
Momentum
Outstanding June - £3,163.73 – will chase up.
QBE
Up to date
River Thames
Up to date
St Paul
Up to date
Novae
Up to date
Tokio Marine, Malaysia
Up to date
Xchanging/Tokio Marine
Up to date
Xchanging/Arch
Outstanding June - £5,397.52
4. Support
AC advised that there were currently 72 SNs outstanding. AC said that the bulk of these had been raised by GLR and Illium. GW said that GLR had recently undertaken an upgrade and it was normal for the SNs to increase whilst this was being carried out. GW asked if AC could comment on the Illium SNs? AC advised that Illium are an internal BPO client to which Xchanging supplies a number of services and therefore every issue raised is logged onto the system, sometimes these can be incorrectly logged as IRIS issues when in fact they relate to other areas of the business.
AH asked whether BPO clients are treated in the same manner as IRIS clients? AC confirmed that all clients are given the same level of service.
NS said that Novae had raised approximated 60 issues in testing that did not appear on this report. AC said that he had noticed this too. AC said that Novae’s account manager was currently going through these items to ascertain which items needed to be logged (e.g. some items raised are not bugs) and these will be entered onto the database in due course.
AH asked whether when items are logged there is a category showing “with client” or “with Xchanging”? DY confirmed that there are several categories and this included whether the item was waiting a response from the customer or from Xchanging.
System Test
AC advised that the system test had been started and that the first stage was to clear the priority one and two items before carrying out the core functional test. The core functional testing is due to be started during the week commencing 23 July 2007. This testing will be carried out by the Indian office and AC will be in India for four weeks to oversee this process.
5. Development
AC discussed the following development items:
300074117 / 0748 Progression Stats Report-INT / Complete300087499 / 0561-Currency Download from LIRMA-BUR / Cancelled
300070042 / 0609-Bx Message Loading-BUR / Spec in Progress
300087494 / 0310-GUI Based Policy/Claim Review Diary-COR / Complete
300073774 / 0419-Progression Triangle Enquiry-COR / Complete
300070041 / 0505-Multi Company/Synd Security-COR / Complete
300064682 / 0595-Screen Design Utility-COR / Testing/System Testing
300070038 / 0599-Full Policy History Enquiry-COR / Complete
300062869 / 0638-Printable Sys Admin Info-COR / Complete
300062179 / 0649-Policy Full and Snapshot Prints-COR / Complete
300067241 / 0504-View All Lloyd’s Prm/Clm Info-LLO / Complete
300094750 / 0959-Moving Posted SCMs-LLO / QA
300102994 / 0006-Process Early Signing Msg / Complete
300107458 / 0982-View Only Bx Closings / Part 1 Complete
Part 2 QA
Part 3 Coding
300107455 / 0359-Enh to Flex Bus Ext / Cancelled
300107573 / 0407-Earned Premium / Spec in Review
300107454 / 0509-Document Production / Spec in Review
300107453 / 0601-Multiple Codes Selections / Spec in Review
300107452 / 0662-Authority Level Checking / Spec in Review
300107459 / 0797-FSA Coding Structure / Cancelled
300107012 / 0977-Study into Acord Msgs / Complete
300107456 / 0984-Cross Policy Generic Rules / Spec in Progress
300107457 / 0983-Risk Code Entry / Coding
GW asked which version the Earned Premium development would be available in? AC said that this would probably be available in 11.17, however, a non-system tested version would be available earlier which members could take if required.
AH asked what the estimate was for the development work on this item? DY said that it was a very big item so it would be likely to be in the region of £250,000 but confirmed that it would be fixed price.
6. Acord Sub Group and Message Viewer Development
DY said that as the Council would be aware, a meeting had been held on 10 July 2007 to discuss Acord with the IUG. DY said that Ian Summers of Aon had been the guest speaker at this meeting and was pleased to report that there had been a very good attendance from the IUG.
DY advised that an in-house presentation of the Acord message viewer had now taken place and the plan was to now give a presentation to the IUG. It was proposed to carry out this presentation during the first week of September 2007 and that the item is planned to be available to IUG members during October 2007 (this is a stand alone item).
DY said that the specification is currently with Mick Hobbs for review and is likely to be issued towards the end of this week.
NS said that he had been reading Xdirect (Issue 3 - 2007) and was interested to find out how the following article would fit in with the discussion held at the last Acord sub group meeting.
Quote…..
Xchanging and Advisen to launch messaging hub
Xchanging and Advisen confirm plans to jointly launch an ACORD messaging hub to all brokers and insurers in the London Market. The messaging hub will support message traffic for placement, endorsements, accounting & settlement and electronic claims.
…..Unquote
AH advised that he had attended the recent open day and had spoken with Arthur Peake regarding web connectivity and could not see where this would fit it. DY said that she would find out.
ACTION 070718.002 DY
Subsequently DY advised that Advisen distribute and provide support for web connectivity messaging gateway.
7. Any Other Business
JT said that he had met with Mark Elvidge the previous week and that ME had outlined the recent re-alignment. JT said that he was unsure if the IUG would continue in a similar format and if so where the IUG fitted into the new structure; additionally he was unsure who would be responsible for future system upgrades and asked if DY could clarify.
DY said that she would continue to be responsible for the IUG and advised that all user group managers are now reporting to Mick Hobbs
DY advised that the account managers now reported to Mark Elvidge. Small enhancements/upgrades would fall under the support team and therefore it would be business as usual in this regard. New business would fall under Mike Brakes in Implementation.
NS said that when Rob Locke visited Novae there was a discussion regarding merging IRIS and Genius into one system for all underwriting customers. NS therefore felt that there was little point in IUG members putting funds into IRIS developments if IRIS had a limited shelf life. NS said that for this reason Novae would not be responding to the request for development items. AH said that if there are plans to merge IRIS and Genius he did not see the point in developing IRIS. NS also said that this news would deter many IUG members from investing in later versions of IRIS, given the time lag between voting for an enhancement and actually being able to go live on the new version.
JT asked what the timeline would be for a merge of IRIS/Genius? DY said that Xchanging were still in the early stages of the planning process and that currently a gap analysis of the two products is being carried out. In the meantime Xchanging will be meeting with individual clients to ascertain their initial thoughts. DY said that she hoped that Xchanging would be able to provide an update at the October IUG meeting.
AH said that the database is fairly similar between IRIS and Genius.
NS said that his view was that the most important development was the .NET migration and that he felt that this was more important than adding additional functionality to IRIS. DY pointed out that the agreement reached with the IUG was that the .NET migration would be partially funded from the Council budget, and if there were to be no Core budget, there would be no Council budget.
System Performance
JT said that QBE had recently upgraded from 7.13 to 8.14 on the company side and had noticed that the performance had deteriorated. JT said that retrieval of information is also taking longer. JT said they could not pinpoint the reason for this and would wait to see if it would resolve itself, if not they would contact their support manager.
GW said that he had also noticed that the performance on 9.15 is slower than 8.14.
NS also mentioned that he had noticed that the performance on 9.15 is slower than in earlier versions.
Release Date
NS said that at the Acord meeting Ian Holland had raised a concern about the release date for IRIS. NS said that he would concur that the date needs to be changed as it can take four to six months to implement a new release.
DY said that the date had been set at the request of the IUG, however, she would be happy to propose a new date to the IUG for consideration. DY asked if NS could suggest a suitable date? NS said that possibly 1 October but that this would have to be a firm date.
There was no further business to discuss and the meeting closed.
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