I suppose it was inevitable, but I bring you the distressing news that bulking lineslips addict Jackie is back from her “illness” (of which very little detail btw – although I did see data suggesting a spike in alcohol sales in Hoxton last Thursday).  And back with the proverbial vengeance.  She is even threatening talk of non-bulking lineslips (which is surely just a lineslip).  So, take my advice.  Close this email immediately, shut down your computer and run.

Tiers moron

Before we get started, can we acknowledge (as I understand the tabloid press has but I have not seen) the glory of the word “tier” to punning headline writers.  We could also have had Tracks of my Tiers (although we have mined the Smokey Robinson seam previously), Dear Tierdre or I was toying with Neither Tier nor There.  But let’s stick with what we have got.

The new tiering system is announced.  And it is cracking news for us burghers of Kent as the government has confirmed that we have nothing else to do all day other than lounge around and drink.  Kent is in tier 3.  That is the whole of Kent, not just the dodgy areas where they actually  have the rona (the data is skewed by significant outbreaks in all three of Swale’s prisons).  Which is going to present some interesting challenges over the next few months.

Take, for instance, the 14th hole at Sweetswood Park golf club on the A264 just outside Tunbridge Wells.  The tee is in Kent.  The main decision facing you as you survey the hole before you is whether to attempt the circa 180 yard carry over the stream that meanders across the fairway.  Now, obvs the answer for the incompetent like me is either “no”, or “let’s have a crack safe in the knowledge I will probably just top it off the end of the teeing ground”.  But let us fantasise.  Suppose you smite one fully and it roars across to the bank on the far side?  Bit of an issue as it happens, because the fairway is in East Sussex and you are not allowed to travel from a tier 3 region to a tier 2 one.  So you have got at least two weeks before you can take your second shot – and in all likelihood you won’t be hitting it until March.

So how about you give yourself the tee shot and drop to play your second on the Sussex side of the stream?  Good idea.  Probably best to knock one down the fairway setting yourself up for a short iron approach.  Let us carry on the fairy tale and say you flick this onto the green and it rolls up close to the flag.  A de facto birdie beckons.  All you have to do is march up to the green and knock it in.  Except to do that involves crossing the stream again as the green is back in Kent.  And the authorities of Sussex are going to clamp down on anybody caught entering virus ridden territory.  So we won’t know what we scored on the hole until the Spring.

And Sweetswood is not alone in such challenges.  Take the sleepy village of Groomsbridge just down the road.  The newer part (which probably dates from the 1500s) has a pub and is in East Sussex.  So, no mixing with other people (a blessing in my view) but still a satisfying Sunday lunch beckons.  Old Groombridge also has a pub.  But it is in Kent so is fundamentally ******.

So, what to do about this?  I think it is fairly simple.  We accelerate Govey Govey Govey’s plans to put a hard border around Kent, declare UDI and blow up the bridge to the Isle of Sheppey to cut us off from the plague ridden.  And the rest of you and your silly little tier system can *** off – the free people of Kent will do what they ****** well like.  Safe in the knowledge that the main Pfizer production plant in Europe is in Sandwich so we will have a de facto monopoly over the only vaccine that seems actually to work if you follow the instructions.  We are also alright in the religious/appointing Monarchs game coz we got the Archbishop.  And we will be the only country on the island of Britain that has a Deal.  A new superpower is born.

Jack to the future

We may as well get it over with early doors.  Ms Hobbs would like you to know the following.

Delegated Authorities:

  1. Lloyd’s has this week issued V3 of the Part VII Transfer coverholder guide. Details are attached and are also available on our website
  2. The second part of the broker webinar relating to the change to DA conditions of trade and other DA changes being introduced was held this week, with over 100 brokers attending. LIIBA’s pre-requisites have been submitted to Lloyd’s and are attached here for information.
  3. The LMA has launched a review of how DA business can be improved (called Project Dare in a pleasing reference to the Gorillaz song featuring Shaun Ryder, because “it’s coming up”) and they are actively seeking responses from brokers. If anyone wishes to review the work being undertaken, details can be found here: https://www.lmadare.com/

Bulking Lineslips (oh God…):

  1. Lloyd’s will be releasing a revised bulletin imminently to replace Y5287 issued in April 2020. This will set out some amendments to requirements for bulking lineslips renewing with Lloyd’s Europe from 1st January 2021. The main amendments are that risk reporting deadlines have been pushed back to 30 days for the first six months of 2021 and the data being requested has been reduced to show the minimum requirements only.
  2. The LMA has provided additional guidance and an endorsement clause (LMA5513) that is attached but should be available on the Lloyd’s Wordings repository now.
  3. We would remind brokers that the new requirements around bulking lineslips are for Lloyd’s Europe business only and the responsibility for ensuring the data is loaded in time into DDM rests with the lead managing agent. The detail can be delegated to the broker but this is subject to the brokers agreement (just to be clear, that is not my “can”).
  4. Lloyd’s has advised MA’s that if they are unable to comply with the requirements, a different placement method will need to be sought.

Claims:

  1. LIIBA, along with the IUA and LMA has conducted a review of the Single Claim Agreement Party (SCAP). A renewed focus to incorporate the SCAP clause in to MRC’s where there is more than one subscribing market is being launched, with communications expected to come out today (still a terrible name).
  2. To support the re-launch, the LMA will be running a session focussing on the placing brokers and underwriters involvement. The session is open to brokers and underwriters and will be taking place on December 2nd (details to follow on how to book a place) Resources for the claim areas will also be made available.
  3. LIIBA will be running its first webinar for claims on December 10th at 9am. Registration details for this event will be released early next week.
  4. Should anyone working within claims wish to be added to our new claims distribution list, please contact enquiries@liiba.co.uk

Data Protection (and you thought bulking Lineslips was bad):

  1. LIIBA is working on various initiatives looking at implications for the market of Brexit, recent guidance coming from the EDPB and other regulatory bodies, such as the ICO
  2. There is still time to book on to LIIBA’s data webinar, being run for our members by Grant Thornton on Tuesday 8th December. If you haven’t already registered, please email Jo.Brady@liiba.co.uk providing names and email addresses for anyone wishing to participate

Next week, I should be able to provide some updates on detail our Tax Working Party are involved with (ahhh.  The duff duff moment).

Giuli noted

As some of you may know, every four years I like to hang out in some really unlikely parts of America to attend presidential campaign rallies.  Hickory Regional Airport (most US airports call themselves “international” on the back of one flight a week to Canada so this is a guide to its hokeyness) in North Carolina where I saw Mike Pence, the cattle shed in Pueblo, Colorado where I saw Hillary and the field in the middle of nowhere outside Manassas in northern Virginia where I saw Barack Obama the night before he was first elected all spring to mind.  So I was really, really hacked off that this s*****g pandemic robbed me of the opportunity this time round.  However, as a legacy of these dalliances, I still get a lot of emails from the campaign teams.  This means that I have now had to absorb into my daily routine the clearing out of the 50 or so messages I am getting encouraging me to support the cause of fighting election fraud and ensure the Venezuelan doesn’t make it to the White House.

All of which is a bit of a pain.  But it does have one potential benefit.  The missives come from all sorts of different people (of course I know they all come from the same source, they just change the name) including, variously, Donald J Trump, Eric Trump, Electoral Fraud Campaign Fund,  Donald Trump Jnr, Lara Trump etc etc you get the picture.  But intriguingly, and very usefully, sometimes they come from “Rudy Giuliani Alerts”.  That is a game changer.  Because if you could go about your business safe in the knowledge that if you were to come within five miles of that crackpot you would be alerted and would have time to change what you were doing and get the h*ll out, life would be so much less daunting.  Now all we need are Matt Hancock Alarms and Paul McCartney Warnings and we will be in clover.

As an aside to cheer you up, if you do contribute to these appeals (I can’t, it would be illegal.  That is the only thing stopping me, honest) then the small print will tell you (or in my case Joel Kopperud at CIAB who read it for me) that 35% will go to fighting the 2020 election result and 65% will be retained for future campaigns.  He really isn’t going away.

PPProgress?

Buried amongst the many worthy attachments that Jackie has provided you will also find an article summarising discussion at an Insurance Europe conference on the progress being made on creating public/private partnerships to provide cover against future pandemics.  Or rather the lack of progress given that talks seem to have stalled in France, Germany and here.  Which is a pity as creative solutions in this space could be a start of the industry rebuilding its image with governments and the public at large in the wake of the trashing it has taken over the BI fiasco.  So it is to be hoped we can persuade at least our lot to engage in the New Year.  Once they stop imprisoning us in our own homes.

Barni-nay

Talking of stalled talks, the Brexit future trade arrangement negotiations will resume over the weekend face to face after one of the EU team tested positive and they all had to self-isolate.  My source inside the talks, as Katya Adler would refer to my friend Dan, tells me the reason the UK delegation didn’t have to quarantine as well is that the two sides are sat more than three metres apart and there are acres of Perspex between them.  Which is interesting as, until he told me this, I had failed to clock the fact that the talks are taking place in the Underwriting Room.

Still time for Bozzer to sell out the fisherpeople (as BBC likes to call them), sign a deal and call it a triumph.  But he can’t do that and keep the tiers in place because Steve Baker, who is really running the country, won’t stomach both.  So we may not see much ppprogress here either.

Pollointing the finger

What, you may ask, is the root of all evil?  Prejudice?  Oppression?  Miranda Hart?  In fact none of these.  Now I know many people – most prominently the other CIAB Joel, Wood – have accused me of being unnaturally obsessed with fast food, but bear with me.  Because the true answer to what is undermining the very fabric of society is chicken burgers.  You may have thought they were a harmless, if unhealthy, method of trying to suppress the after effects after a night on the sauce.  But no.  They are at the core of driving climate change and inherently racist.   Problematic.

Maragoner

I know there has been a bit too much sport this week, but I could not finish without some mention of the GOAT.  Now any man who snorts cocaine on the pitch after scoring a goal in a charity game is almost beyond criticism.  But something I heard on the radio did make me feel that, just possibly, El Diego might have suffered from a smidgeon of a lack of self-awareness.  In responding to the questions for the In Focus feature in Shoot! magazine, he apparently listed as his miscellaneous dislikes “injustice”.  Hand of Gone.

I am off to Canterbury to be crowned King of Kent

2020.11.24 – MRC-Line-slip-Brussels-Addendum-v1.1-November-2020

Coverholder guide v3.0

DA CoT Pre Requisites LIIBA V2 Nov 2020

Government-backed pandemic schemes stall in UK and Germany – Commercial Risk20.11.26

Lloyd’s Europe Bulking Line Slip Reporting Endorsement LMA5513