ACORD, the standard setting body for the global insurance industry, is experiencing a massive jump in global reinsurance and other industry interest in its digital products and services, CEO Bill Pieroni said.

The increase comes as reinsurers and carriers, already pursuing technology upgrades, have accelerated those efforts during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We have a backlog of demand from our members to deploy our digital solutions,” Pieroni said during the recording of Carrier Management’s “Big Re” reinsurance innovation webinar, which will be aired on Sept. 15, 2020.

Pieroni said the backlog is more than 50 percent above typical levels. What’s more, he added, the London market is among the stronger demand drivers.

“We’ve got software assets that help with e-placement [and] helps with claims management, particularly in the London market, which always led the world in terms of a pull demand,” Pieroni added. Lloyd’s has historically been making a big push and continues to under the current leadership team around digitization. We are increasing the number of colleagues we’ve got focused on the London market and focused on reinsurance, and it spans every stakeholder within the reinsurance industry – MGAs, MGUs, underwriters, primary carriers, reinsurers.”

Pieroni said the demand surge is also coming from the Middle East, North Africa, South Africa, Australia, Japan, China and North America.

“It’s ubiquitous,” he said. “I would say its two to three-fold depending on which geography and business you’re talking about.”

Pieroni said of ACORD’s 36,000 global members, reinsurers “were the tip of the sphere, really using the tools [and] technique solutions that ACORD provided.”

The digitation that has emerged from the pandemic has helped quicken their modernization push. Beyond the pandemic, however, primary carriers, MGAs, brokers and agents are encouraging reinsurers to digitize in an ongoing effort that predates COVID-19, Pieroni added.

“We’re so very excited about this,” Pieroni said. “There’s nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come … the forces that are compelling the full continuum of reinsurance stakeholders to use digitation will only increase moving forward.”

Pieroni was referring to products from the ACORD Solutions Group, which include construction aids and digital accelerations that address things like document delivery and automation and data transformation/straight-through processing. There’s also ACORD’s ADEPT (ACORD Data Exchange Platform & Translator), which is an industry-owned market capability that allows for real-time data exchange, translation and transformation.

Click here to sign up for Carrier Management’s Big Re Reinsurance Innovation Webinar: “Reinsurance Innovation: What’s Wanted, Needed and on Its Way.” The webinar will be broadcast on Sept. 15, 2020, with panelists Steve Chirico, director in the property/casualty rating division of AM Best; Patrick O’Brien, CEO and Director at Greenlight Reinsurance Ireland, and Bill Pieroni, president & CEO of ACORD.