Blueprint Two: Digital overhaul of the Lloyd’s market is underway
Lloyd’s ambitious digital transformation program – known as Blueprint Two – is entering a critical phase, with full implementation planned for mid-2025.
The initiative aims to completely modernise how insurance is placed, processed, and claimed within the Lloyd’s market, replacing manual tasks and fragmented systems with streamlined, data-driven workflows.
But what exactly is Blueprint Two? What changes will it bring – and what challenges lie ahead for those operating in (and around) the London market?
Why the insurance industry needed a shake-up
For years, the Lloyd’s market – and much of the global insurance industry – operated on systems that felt like they were held together by duct tape and legacy thinking. Manual processes, fragmented communication, duplicated data entry, and mountains of paperwork slowed everything down. Meanwhile, clients expected fast, seamless, digital experiences – and the gap between expectation and reality kept growing.
Recognising this widening gap, Lloyd’s of London launched The Future at Lloyd’s initiative in 2019 – a long-term vision aimed at transforming the market into the most advanced insurance marketplace in the world. This wasn’t just about keeping up with tech trends; it was about redefining how insurance works at a fundamental level.
At the heart of this vision lies Blueprint Two – a strategic roadmap for delivering digital, data-driven infrastructure that supports faster, cheaper, and more transparent insurance transactions. It’s the operational backbone of the future Lloyd’s wants to build.
In other words, this isn’t a cosmetic update – it’s a full system reboot.
And while the initiative is being driven by Lloyd’s, its message is loud and clear for the global insurance industry: modernize now, or risk becoming irrelevant.
What is Blueprint Two?
While Blueprint One focused on high-level design and ambition, Blueprint Two is where things get real: detailed architecture, implementation plans, and technology solutions to create a digital-first marketplace.
At its core, Blueprint Two is about replacing outdated, manual, and paper-heavy workflows with automated, standardised, and connected digital processes. It’s designed to deliver:
- a core data record that acts as a single source of truth for every transaction,
- digital gateways and APIs for seamless integration between market participants,
- and end-to-end process redesign, covering placement, premium processing, claims, and renewals.
This isn’t just tech for tech’s sake. The goal is to dramatically reduce friction in the Lloyd’s market – cutting costs, increasing speed, improving data quality, and creating a better experience for everyone involved, from underwriters to brokers to end clients.
Key components of the Blueprint Two strategy
Blueprint Two isn’t one single platform or product – it’s a collection of tightly integrated solutions designed to digitise the Lloyd’s market from the ground up. Here are the core components driving the transformation:
Core data record (CDR)
The CDR is the foundation. It provides a standardised, agreed-upon dataset that captures all the essential information about a risk, from placement to claims. It removes ambiguity, reduces rekeying, and enables faster automation across the entire insurance lifecycle.
Digital gateway
Think of it as the highway connecting everyone in the market. The digital gateway uses APIs to allow brokers, underwriters, and other stakeholders to connect their systems directly to Lloyd’s infrastructure – streamlining data exchange and enabling real-time transactions.
Process redesign
Blueprint Two isn’t just about plugging in new tech – it’s about rethinking how work gets done. From premium processing to claims handling, the strategy introduces simplified, automated processes that replace the legacy, manual steps that have slowed things down for decades.
Market integration
Instead of building another siloed platform, Lloyd’s is focused on interoperability. Blueprint Two is designed to work with existing broker and carrier systems, not against them. This reduces duplication and ensures adoption doesn’t require a complete tech overhaul.
Shared services and infrastructure
The vision includes central services for tasks like sanctions checking, compliance, and payments – creating economies of scale and reducing the burden on individual firms.
Challenges and pushback
For all its promise, Blueprint Two hasn’t had a completely smooth ride. Like any major transformation effort – especially one in a centuries-old market – it’s faced its fair share of resistance, delays, and skeptical side-eyes.
Here are some of the key challenges:
Legacy systems and integration pain
Many market participants are still running on older systems that don’t play nicely with modern APIs and data standards. Integrating these legacy systems with the new Lloyd’s infrastructure is complex, time-consuming, and, in some cases, expensive.
Change fatigue
Let’s be honest – this isn’t the first time the insurance industry has been promised a shiny new future. After years of pilot projects, platform shifts, and “this time for real” initiatives, some stakeholders are understandably wary of more change.
Cost of implementation
While Blueprint Two is designed to reduce costs in the long run, the short-term investment – in terms of time, money, and internal resources – is significant. Smaller firms, in particular, have voiced concerns about being left behind or overwhelmed.
Cultural resistance
This one’s tricky. Even with the right tools, transformation can stall if people are stuck in old habits. Insurance is still a relationship-heavy industry, and there’s a learning curve (and mindset shift) required to embrace full digital workflows.
How experienced digital partners can make this work for you
As promising as Blueprint Two is, its success won’t come down to technology alone. In fact, one of the biggest misconceptions about market-wide transformation is that a new platform or a centralised data model is enough.
The reality? True progress depends on how well each organisation adapts – and how seamlessly new systems are integrated into everyday work.
An added challenge is that many companies in the insurance sector lack in-house expertise when it comes to development and integration of modern systems – at least not to the level of a dedicated IT company whose core focus and strength lies in exactly that. Without the right technical partner, even the best technologies can fall short of delivering real impact.
Companies like ours have seen these challenges up close: legacy systems held together by patches and spreadsheets, processes that evolved around workarounds rather than efficiency, and teams who are understandably cautious after years of promised transformation that didn’t quite land.
We know that solving these issues requires more than plugging in a few APIs. It takes strategic thinking, technical expertise, and a clear understanding of how insurance actually works – not just in theory, but on the ground.
Our role is to bridge the gap between vision and execution. That means helping insurers modernise without burning everything down, designing digital tools people actually want to use, and translating complex system changes into clear business value. It means working closely with clients to improve data quality and automation – not for its own sake, but to reduce friction, save time, and make smarter decisions possible.
Equally important, a technology partner builds with the future in mind. The insurance market is evolving fast, and Blueprint Two is just the beginning. Further modernisation and transformation are not only expected – they’re inevitable. The sooner companies get on board with the digital transformation, the better positioned they’ll be to keep pace with competitors and remain truly competitive in the long run.
Because at the end of the day, Lloyd’s vision can only succeed if the market is ready for it. And it’s digital product partners – the ones who understand both the tech and the industry – who help make that readiness real.
Want to learn how exactly we can help you? Get in touch with us.
