Stanford Ponzi and D&O / E&O Insurance Coverage

The Chief Investment Officer of Stanford is the only one against whom criminal charges have been filed...so far. Her assets and the assets of Stanford being frozen, she isn't finding takers for legal representation on contingent fees.

In today's news (story here) she sues Lloyd's for coverage under Stanford's D&O and Company Indemnity policy seeking $5m in actual damages and to get the media to cover the story and try to embarrass the Lloyd's Managing Agents involved, $40m in punitive damages.

Paraphrasing from what I've been told by law firms involved in bankruptcy protection and unwinding these matters, the following is how I understand it to go. Do you the readers agree with what I've been told?

The law firm defending the Stanford group in its bankruptcy goes to court and as the first act, asks for estimated legal fees (big sum) to be set aside in escrow.

That law firm then discusses all of the claims for money against Stanford with the claimants to do an off-the-record assessment of the merits.

The cases are ranked by the anticipated outcome (from must pay to no chance) and then the lawyers for the claimants are notified of their standing (again off the record). The lawyers for the claimants have their own assessment of the merits and they either proceed to settlement or an actual review of the merits through court. But guiding the discussions is the fact that the assets available (net of legal fees) is always a small fraction of what's been claimed in lawsuits.

The D&O or E&O insurance firms are in very close contact with the bankruptcy law firm and when the cases are ranked, they act. If these insurance companies are to pay the legal fees and then not get anything returned if fraud is proven, they are wasting money so they wait for the first assessments of the merits.

The tough part for everyone involved (including information outlets like Advisen) is that there is no transparency to the real horse-trading here. And because everyone knew that Lerach was straightforward and predictable as a deal-maker, the D&O or E&O guys could reserve accordingly. But with the new bumper crop of Lerach wannabes, it's anybody's guess.

Ponzi Schemes

This week the Insurance Insider wrote about D&O insurance exposure in Lloyd's and the London insurance market to the ponzi schemes in the US.

Quoting from the recent Advisen report on Securities Litigation and the D&O Market, the article lists the proliferation of 2009 litigation (433 Madoff and 9 Stanford not to mention another 70 subprime and credit crisis-related cases). You can buy a list of this litigation here.

Apparently the law firm which represented Enron in its bankruptcy made almost as much as Milberg who brought the class action. This means both sides are racking up big legal bills before even getting to a judgment on the merits of the case.

Therefore these cases are going to lead to use of D&O coverage for mounting legal fees and when merits are judged, it's more likely that significant E&O or Professional Indemnity claims are paid. Core D&O claims are less likely to be paid as the losses were so "systemic" - how could any D or O be more culpable?

Similarly with the ponzi schemes, if you're bringing a case against the Ds&Os, where's the money to go after? Ruth Madoff only has so much jewelry and the rest of the Madoff business isn't worth $50b. Instead and in addition, go after the funds and pros that fed Madoff.

On this point, I remember a ponzi scheme that raced through UVM while I attended. The guys at the top of the pyramid fully knew that it would collapse under its own weight but that so long as they got out at least twice they would be playing with other people's money until the inevitable collapse.

While I'm happy to see Madoff's staff and family (was there really a distinction?) getting indicted like his accountant (all of these people had to be in on it), I am waiting to see how the scheme can be unwound to find the people who gave Madoff money at the beginning of the Ponzi scheme. These are the crooks Madoff is pleading guilty to protect.

On the insurance coverage of ponzi litigation, there could be negligence in due diligence on the part of feeder funds and investment professionals who put their clients into Madoff recently, and that could be covered under E&O insurance. But criminal charges will be overwhelming when they unearth Madoff's true accomplices - those with Madoff at the top of the pyramid. I doubt any insurance company would honor their E&O.

Short the Makers of Slipcases, Martin Kett has found his Soapbox

I shared an office for 2 years in London with a couple of smart guys applying good technology to make the commercial insurance industry more efficient and less stone age. Martin Kett & Geoff Maskell were very supportive of me launching a blog even when I called them "muppets".

Martin has started a blog and just commented about a favorite topic of mine, Lloyd's quest to retire paper processing and to adopt technology (onwards Web Connectivity). See the post here and enjoy Martin's dry with and love for dry gin.

Market Reform in London: a status report

The Market Reform Office recently held a briefing citing the continued success of adopting online processing of accounting and claims in the London market.

April showed 90% of premiums were filed electronically with 65% of changes in premiums filed electronically. The goal is to get both figures to 100% and to have no vans driving paper from Lime Street to the processing centers outside London.

Brokers are still filing these accounting notices mostly through ACORD messaging but also uploading scanned documents as well. It might sound like scanning documents which then get printed at the processing centers is not really a big step, but the market had to start somewhere and the end vision remains of having structured ACORD messages to move data from one database to another without re-keying at the bureau processing centers.

The MRO highlighted how activity is picking up where Bermuda business processes through the London bureau – no doubt due in part to the efforts of Advisen and Web Connectivity who have now installed the island’s first ACORD messaging gateways.

While these back-office processes are moving online, the front-office insurance placing process remains a laggard in terms of market adoption. Aon proudly cited how “80% of recent treaty renewals were supported electronically”, but a recent report from consulting firm Watertrace showed that the market only wants to get involved in e-placing when full integration is available. ACORD is responding by “fattening the skinny placement guidelines”, to be piloted later this year.

The Price of Apples

Amazing how many good D&O stories I missed on vacation last week from the Siemens claim to Aspen hiring away quality D&O underwriters from Lloyd's Managing Agent Novae, to D&O legend James Weatherstone taking the helm for Arch Europe.

Catching up with a Lloyd's broker yesterday who brings in US risk to London, D&O price volatility is up. In the Financial Institution market for D&O and E&O, the underwriting markets are shrinking their lines, and in one case flat-out non-renewing a policy. In general corporate D&O the impact is less profound but the tide will turn.

I'm also happy to report that the AIRMIC Benchmark Survey is well underway with the majority of respondents coming from Financial Institutions who want to get a good sense of where the D&O market is.

Benefits of ECF

This month's Market Reform newsletter (here) offers a very good article by executives at Lockton detailing how use of ECF has allowed a higher degree of focus and execution on the complex tasks of broking claims while reducing the unnecessary overhead of handling routine claims matters. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

You can put together a package of, say, six claims, totalling no more than
€1000 in a matter of minutes. Previously these would have taken hours to walk
round the market.

The MI reports that the in house workflow system is now capable of producing
allow for a much more proactive approach to the working day....(which) allows us
to start to measure each stage of the process. This in turn means we can start
to set target turnaround times for each stage and flag up where these aren’t
met. This means that we can manage by exception and not just progress work in
strict order.

(Before ECF) claims staff were constrained by the hours that underwriters
were open to accept files

The other half of return

Insurance companies make their earnings from underwriting profit and investment profit on the premiums collected. I haven't really covered that angle to date.

While the big story has been the bond insurer subsidiary (SCA), and subprime exposure, yesterday's XL's earnings announcement (here) talks about the hit from investment return.

The Finance Director of Lloyd's gave some comments to assure the markets that the Lloyd's Central Fund is well tended to - see coverage here.

The subprime bodies are buried in both areas and upcoming earnings announcements will show further evidence of what we at Advisen are seeing, an end to the soft market in one important market sector (Directors & Officers and Errors & Omissions insurance for Financial Institutions), although the imbalance of supply and demand is too great to change the overall market dynamic. For more on the topic, click here.

Q1 2008 Premiums: No broad market impact by subprime

Advisen released the results for Q1 2008 of the RIMS Benchmark Survey. See the press release here. The picture continues to be good for buyers and not helpful to broker earnings nor the long-term profit picture for insurance underwriters.

The cycle has not found bottom despite incredible financial market turmoil. My post yesterday discussed how Lloyd's is not concerned. Advisen clients I speak with are of mixed minds - those that are in the market for professional lines insurance (e.g. directors & officers, errors & omissions, crime) to financial institutions (lenders, investment banks, funds), those guys are not comfortable with what they have written and are looking forward to the influx of claims that will shake up who writes what and how this volatility will increase pricing in this space quickly.

We have to wait and see how litigation progresses - currently we are tracking 259 cases, including 62 securities class actions related to subprime and the credit crisis. The potential is for the concentric circles of loss to mount into something that has ripple effects within the markets far beyond D&O for financial institutions. See a recent post about this here.

The results have been picked up in the trade press already with an additional quote by Advisen's Dave Bradford in a story by Financial Week here.

Mr. Bradford said financial services and investment businesses, which have been
hit hard by the subprime mortgage meltdown, will see directors and officers’
liability insurance rates rise because of the increase in claims they face. But,
he added, there will be a steady decline in rates for most companies not exposed
to mortgage losses. “It wasn’t until the first quarter that underwriters pushed
through significant rates increases for financials. But it hasn’t spread beyond
that fairly narrow group.”

Lloyd's Profits up, subprime concern down

Lloyd's reported record profit of GBP3.85bn for 2007, up from GBP3.66bn in 2006 (enough to give CEO Richard Ward a 46.5% pay raise).

Despite growing fears in the market about the impending losses from subprime and other market turmoil, Lloyd's brushed off an anticipated GBP 100m in such losses as not material and "within the normal course of business".

Ward highlighted the job ahead (and perhaps why Rolf Tolle earns slightly more than Ward) as "to manage the cycle, focus on underwriting discipline and focus on underwriting for profit".

See the full story here.

In other Lloyd's news, the search for Lord Levene's successor is apparently on and the bar is set high - see a full detail of Levene's career path here (including how he, like me, roots for Chelsea).

Chase Them Down

Hits to this blog show one of the most widely-read posts discussed complaints about the small decrease in capacity of Lloyd's - see the post here.

In today's Advisen Front Page News we ran a story on the topic about Lloyd's managing agent Ascot Underwriting who announced they were decreasing their "premium income capacity by 28% to GBP450m". See the story here.

In citing how the weak U.S. dollar and the soft market of decreasing prices for commercial lines insurance coverage combined for a "double whammy", Ascot's business development manager Michael Bullock provided a noteworthy comment:

You might well find you lose out on good accounts because you can't chase them
down quite to the extent the market might do.

We haven't seen new capacity in the past month or so, we're seeing existing providers announcing cuts like Ascot - it's just a matter of time before some claims come in and change the supply & demand equation and they are likely to happen in a big way in the area of management and professional lines coverage for financial institutions (D&O, E&O/PI).

Where that ripples in terms of increased pricing remains to be seen. Overall, supply is still disproportionately high as related to demand.

To follow this and other stories subscribe to Front Page News here.

The Cinderella Story

With the title of this post I refer not to the beginning of the college basketball tournament in the U.S. which begins today and is known for the "Cinderella stories" of overachieving college teams, but rather to a story in today's Advisen Front Page News quoting Lord Levene, Chairman of Lloyd's.



Levene hits on two of my favorite themes about Lloyd's - the need for paperless processing (see my posts on the subject here) and the tension among old and new capacity providers at Lloyd's in today's soft market (see my recent post here).



In discussing how progress has been made in ending the van runs from Lime Street, Levene notes that there is a long way to go before paperless processing is a reality and hints at the fact that the insurance industry could be at a competitive disadvantage to other capital providers such as the investment banks pouring money into the industry and securitizing policies. I love this quote from Lord Levene:

'If we are to end our status as a Cinderella industry we have to improve
the quality of our systems.'

Advisen has invested in Web Connectivity which enables paperless processing through its award-winning ACORD messaging gateway EnabledB2B.



And answering the complaints (of Mr. Hiscox and Mr. Catlin) about allowing new money into Lloyd's, in affirming how Lloyd's has agreed to manage the cycle through the Franchise Directorate, Levene said:

'I think there is an extreme lack of candor in this industry.'

The story can be found here.

Tipping Point

Commercial lines insurance pricing is set by the economics of supply and demand.

As evidenced by the chart on the right there is a serious imbalance. Using US policyholder surplus as supply and US GDP as demand for insurance, the ratio of supply:demand is represented by the red line currently at 3.7%.

Note that the median in recent decades is 3.2% meaning we are at high levels and that there is a fierce downward pressure on pricing.

When does it change? What's the tipping point? Could the new litigation beyond subprime bring about this change?

I heard an interesting take today from a senior reinsurance broker in London who says the tipping point has always been the first major reinsurance firm that refuses to write anything further and that this has a ripple effect, starting with the primary insurance underwriters that rely on this reinsurance.

This broker sees a period of time beginning in the next 6 months where capacity is scarce and serious profits can be made from escalating prices, despite the fact that as the crisis widens and deepens, Advisen's $3.6b estimate for D&O losses is likely to increase.

He sees Q2 2008 reports leading to painful discussions about reserves among underwriting firm managers and that this will lead to somebody being that first firm to close up the Financial Institution D&O shop.

In the meantime he's placing a ton of excess layers for those wanting to take advantage of capacity while it's still available.

As the turmoil in financial institutions continues to play out wickedly in front of our eyes, the insurance industry awaits the inevitable claims. The question is whether the inevitable contraction of capacity and increase in pricing will be isolated to financial institution D&O or even to D&O or whether the impact of these claims can have a material impact on overall insurance pricing.

Spirit or Letter of the Contract?

Law firm Barlow, Lyde & Gilbert LLP wrote an excellent story concerning the relationship between the reinsurance contract and the original insurance contract. We covered it in Advisen Front Page News Europe today (see here).



The English Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the reinsured (a ceding insurance company from the U.S.) over the London market reinsurer in saying that the spirit of the reinsurance contract was to match the coverage terms of the original insurance contract.



Never mind that the case deals with the original insurance companies having to pay for losses which occurred outside the term of the insurance contract. The ruling is an important one for the London reinsurance market signalling that where the insurance company pays the reinsurance company must honor the legal ruling that led to this payment.



Being an American in London, I particularly enjoyed the following conclusion from the article:



"Reinsurers' arguments in the present case had a whiff of an assertion (although they were careful not to say so expressly) that Lexington were an American Corporation and had therefore to take unsatisfactory decisions on the chin, while reinsurers were English (or doing business in the English market) and could not be expected to do so. That, of course, will not do."



Barlow, Lyde & Gilbert have just subscribed to Advisen and join the list of law firms with insurance industry practices that use Advisen for our database of large losses and for our wordings comparison analytics.



To subscribe to Advisen Front Page News Europe click here.

To learn more about how Advisen helps law firms help their clients call +44(0)20 7929 6929 in London or +1.212.897.4820 in NY.

Complaints about Capacity at Lloyd's

Advisen Front Page News Europe ran a story today entitled "Some of Lloyd's Biggest Underwriters are Crying Foul Over Bloated Capacity" which piqued my interest.

The story by AM Best details the soft market in commercial lines insurance pricing, which I have covered here, but what interested me was the public statements by the heads of two of the largest Lloyd's Managing Agents.

The background is that Lloyd's total capacity is forecast to be down 2% in 2008 and yet some of the largest players are instilling their own underwriting discipline and cutting capacity further. From the article:

Even before the Lloyd's announcement, many Lloyd's underwriters in the fourth
quarter last year were announcing 2008 capacity cuts well above 2%. Liberty
Syndicates cut its capacity by 9.5%, R J Kiln cut 2008 capacity 14%, and Hiscox
reduced capacity for its Syndicate 33 by 20%.

Quotes in the article from the head of Catlin and the head of Hiscox expressed disappointment in the move by Lloyd's. What struck me is that Lloyd's doesn't mandate a minimum that Hiscox nor Catlin nor any syndicate must write, so why the complaint?

How it works: Lloyd's sets a maximum capacity that any syndicate may write - the aggregate was that which was lowered by 2%. How it's changing: Rolf Tolle pointed out that Lloyd's will no longer announce this number in advance and will instead report previous year's performance only - in keeping with competitors' practices.

What is really behind these complaints, then, is that these managing agents are not happy that there are new entrants at Lloyd's. Syndicates have increased from 66 to 75 in 2008 (including 5 Special Purpose Syndicates (SPS's) and Managing agents have increased to 46 in 2008 (see here).

With new money in from other underwriters, and from the capital markets (Goldman Sachs, Bank of America), current Managing Agents don't like the increased competition.

You can sign up for Advisen Front Page News Europe here and follow this and other stories from the commercial lines insurance industry in Europe and globally.

Another Lloyd's Survey

Lloyd's recently released the results of its annual survey of its underwriters citing their concerns for the upcoming year, see my comments here.

Today I read about a survey measuring satisfaction with Lloyd's as related by 506 brokers, reinsureds, insureds and coverholders. The results are on page 3 of the .pdf document found here - overall satisfaction increased from 7.6 out of 10 to 7.8.

It's noteworthy that the results show good scores for turnaround speed in all areas except contract documentation and staying informed during a claim - noteworthy because these are the most important to the client. The reform agenda is working to improve these areas with contract certainty and electronic processing of claims.

The case is made that there is an uptick in overall satisfaction which can be attributed to the gains made in modernizing the processing of policies at Lloyd's. I support the assumption because of the significant progress made in processing accounting messages and claims online instead of by paper.

To evidence this progress, see the story on the same page which cites the Market Reform Group's report that 70% of accounting messages and 92% of claims are now processed online.

In terms of the impact this reform is having on brokers, one of the big 3 brokers uses ACORD messaging (the Web Connectivity gateway) and told me this week that the ROI from online processing of accounting and claims is already being felt in their bottom line.

Answering Gargamel – Part II of II

To further the discussion of how the insurance industry is evolving, it’s important to put into context what commercial insurance is transacted online.

ACE, among others, offers D&O quotes on its website. This is driven by a matrix of basic exposure assumptions as maintained by ACE underwriters. The key is that this commoditisation of D&O is only available for small clients, to get a quote from anyone, including ACE, you have to speak to an underwriter which means you have to go through a broker.


No insurance underwriter is prepared to provide online quotes for large, complex risk. There’s no liquidity, no exposure benchmarks to use, it’s not like adding spreads to treasury bonds and deriving pricing. Just like new issue pricing in the bond markets, new issue insurance pricing is more art than science.

This is why the adoption of technology is evolving late – just as I was nearly done with implementing online trading solutions for the secondary bond market before we drafted the first prototype for new issuance.

That being said, it’s sad that there is still paper in the process and I applaud the progress made by those firms at Lloyd’s who have made online accounting and online claims processing such a success. The majority of this success is made possible by simple, yet deep, integration using ACORD standards.

Mr. Gargamel I apologize for the delayed response, but I hope I’ve addressed your points. Thank you for the thoughtful comment to Part I of this response (see here).

Answering Gargamel – Part I of II

I admit to poor form in spending more time trying to (unsuccessfully) identify “Mr. Gargamel” who posted a thoughtful comment to a post (here) than in addressing the many and important issues in the comment.

The crux of his comment is the pivot point of who is boss in the insurance industry – He Who Pays Premium, Places Premium or Writes Policies for Premium.

If you agree that the impact of the internet has been to empower the consumer (who now dictates the terms of engagement for the purchase cycle of many products), then why hasn’t the commercial lines insurance industry evolved to this model?

Personal lines insurance products have – they are all transacted online, competition is fierce and comparison sites are hugely successful.

What’s the difference in commercial lines whether in the US, Bermuda or on Lime Street?

I compare the commercial insurance industry to the syndication of new bond issuance. Although Bill Hambrecht has launched an auction site to connect companies raising capital through IPO or secondary offerings to investor capital, this is both new and relatively insignificant.

Ford issues paper through Merrill, Morgan, Lehman & Goldman because of distribution – these houses can provide valuable analysis AND provide a wide network of significant buyers. There is no comparison site for this large issuance and there is little to no activity on the insurance equivalent – RI3K.

For these reasons, I disagree with the sentiment from the comment that “traditional agency channels will almost certainly decline”.

PS - Adoption of ACORD standards will not by itself empower the Risk Manager, the influence dynamic will not shift from the brokers and underwriters. Instead, adoption of efficient placement using ACORD will help take unnecessary cost out of the process and these savings should be passed on to the client. Call the management team at Web Connectivity to learn more.

Comments on the Lloyd's Annual Underwriting Survey

What does thr Lloyd’s Annual Underwriting Survey tell us?

1) Lloyd’s is committed to providing more information about its performance than its competitors do. Survey respondents cited such transparency as a major competitive advantage and I believe it's part of why Lloyd’s brand is one of the business world’s most powerful.

2) Subprime is a concern to all, not just the D&O guys. The majority of respondents write property, marine, energy, and reinsurance yet “Managing the Cycle” is the most important issue, and “Global Financial Market Instability” the most significant factor, facing the global insurance industry in 2008.

3) Head East – the greatest area of growth according to Lloyd's underwriters is in China and India. I think this should say “untapped area of growth” because I believe Lloyd’s could write a lot more North American risk than it does. The combination of relaxed rules about how brokers can bring risk to Lloyd’s and the ease-of-access through adoption of ACORD standards will make it far easier for brokers to include quotes from Lloyd’s in marketing run-of-the-mill U.S. risk.

4) On the subject of Lloyd’s Market Reform, there is great progress in going to paperless accounting and claims. The report cites 82% agreeing that there is “high commitment” to reform but I’d like to see Lloyd’s boost its market reform marketing efforts by conducting a study about the impact of adopting ACORD standards. For instance, is manual upoad/download sustainable as compared to integrating ACORD standards into the process? We at Web Connectivity have volunteered to conduct this survey.

5) There is one underwriter who should be removed from the premises – see the chart below:

Hitting for the Cycle

I find today’s markets confusing and contradictory.

Where are we in the cycle?

Clearly the insurance cycle is clear – we are in price freefall.

However, in the cycle of efficient markets, we are still writing the history of subprime and its impact on global markets.

Going back to the great quote (here) about the daily losers in the global game of subprime hide and seek, credit market insiders reveal that it’s worse than most know. I there is one constant theme across everyone I know on credit desks, it’s that the worst is yet to come.

Take the story I heard over Sunday brunch about how buyers of loans can’t buy performing loans without having to agree to take on the non-performers that could destroy their chances of good performance. In a rush against the clock, banks are hoping to off-load these non-performers before write-down Judgement Day.

So if it’s going to get worse, why is there price support in the capital markets?

Reading a quote by James Paulsen, Chief Investment Strategist at Wells Capital, a Wells Fargo company, I was struck by his assertion that the housing market malaise has not impacted consumer spending. He’s bullish on stocks. Further, he cites how the falling US Dollar is helping reverse a trend of net exports and that rising value from exports is having a material effect on GDP (appx 1.5%).

Another article in the same magazine talked more about what’s next - that eventually the write-downs will ebb (we estimate that will be at $440B and we’re only just over $260B); that some clever structured finance groups will find another match good investment money with need for good capital needs in a variety of good vehicles, that these vehicles will be securitized and that the bond insurers will have something new to back. Efficient markets win again.

Where are we in the impact of subprime on the insurance industry?

We’re in the denial stage. Advisen data shows clearly that pricing is not affected yet, even among banks buying D&O. As unbelievable as this is (and note that Aon published numbers showing an increase of 18% - see here), one savvy insurance insider told me today in London that the D&O market is not likely to change with the first claims but instead wait until the first reserves are hit. There’s just too much money chasing underwriting profits.

Much like the litigation and resulting D&O hard market came to life years after the investment impact of the corporate scandals of Enron and WorldCom, subprime will be a story for the insurance market in 2010 while the capital markets are onto something new.

As an information provider to commercial insurance providers we constantly review whether we are ahead of the information demand curve – are we providing what our customers need? Recent comments from brokers and underwriters indicate “a subprime fatigue” and one even said that there is “too much analysis”. These comments only make sense if profit-hunting will continue until it’s way too late.

Insurance Industry Events

More than any industry I've worked in, insurance is relationship-driven.

Lloyd's in particular thrives on the trust between brokers and underwriters and buyers of insurance feel comfortable that their assets are covered based on a handshake.

This is both good for the customer and bad for those trying to document the policies involved. It's no wonder insurance litigation is so prevalent around claims. In fact, I've just hired a terrific new Sales Director (Colin Fennelly). In past positions Colin sold outsourced services to insurance companies to reduce the defense costs associated with this litigation, getting paid out of any savings found. It's an amazing economic ecosystem.

London has achieved a higher degree of "Contract Certainty" through recent reforms (see here for more), and the challenge of online processing of commercial insurance is still formidable. For example, how do you trade handshakes online?

Advisen invested in Web Connectivity which is the market leader in ACORD messaging software which is a key reason why Lloyd's and London market brokers and underwriters are moving accounting and claims processing online. Web Connectivity's growing client list and increased online volumes are highly correlated.

While the Lloyd's and London markets congregate in the square mile of postcode EC3 and meet socially all the time, and Bermuda is a close reinsurance community, the rest of the global insurance industry frequents industry events to meet with customers and trading partners. I was floored at the number of events Advisen is tracking. See list here.

I'm planning to attend the ACORD Conference in Las Vegas in May and the AIRMIC conference in Edinburgh in June and Advisen has a big presence at the year's biggest event - the RIMS Conference in April.