Blueprint Two – Delaying phase 2 was a positive step

The recent announcement by Lloyd’s of a delay of the second phase of its digital transformation looks, on face value, like negative news, but it has been received with relief in the market as a necessary step.

Announcements of delays are seldom accompanied by great fanfare, joy or jubilation, from commuter trains, to airline flights, to the postponement of complicated business projects. But delay can be positive as well as necessary. Sometimes, something needs to be postponed.

Blueprint Two, the Lloyd’s digital transformation process, is a project that involves a bewildering array of stakeholders and moving parts, involving as it does the whole Lloyd’s market’s digital transformation.

It is important to be honest, clear-eyed, transparent and realistic about such steps and what they mean in practice. The statement from Lloyd’s last week is, broadly speaking, very good news for Blueprint Two and the market, not bad.

Lloyd’s confirmed, at the Lloyd’s Management Association’s (LMA) request, that the launch date of phase two of Blueprint Two, which includes the so-called digital gateway, has been put back from October 2024 to April 2025.

Firstly, this is a market-wide initiative. As the body representing the managers of Lloyd’s syndicates, the LMA’s request represents an honest appraisal of the market’s journey towards transformation. Somebody needed to pull the trigger, whether that was the LMA or the other main stakeholders.

Secondly, the announcement has been warmly received by those in the know. Everyone we talk to agrees with this. The buzz across the market is that this delay is an overdue reality-check. Nobody is calling it negative, everyone is quietly praising it as good news and necessary.

Thirdly, the primary reason why it is necessary – and positive – is it allows the market more time to focus on delivering phase one in good order. An early implementation of phase two was always seen as risky while the market was still working on the first phase.

Naturally, there are business implications to acknowledge. For service providers, for instance, delays to market technology projects could be seen as negative on face value. For anyone building a solution against phase two, monetising that inevitably gets pushed back.

This does not alter the reality that this has been the right thing to do. What matters, ultimately, is successful market delivery. More time to get phase one right, and then more time to turn attention towards getting phase two right, will help the market on that journey towards successful digital transformation.