Despite technology advances streamlining the way the insurance industry does business, brokers are likely to remain the intermediary party in deals struck between reinsurers and their clients.

This was according to a panel of reinsurance executives who last week said the industry was actively upgrading its technology systems, but they didn't foresee the new systems diminishing the important part brokers play in placing business for insurers and reinsurers.

One of the panel participants was Alex Letts, CEO of UK-based RI3K, a company creating a hub databoard for reinsurance information. Mr. Letts said in order to keep a competitive edge, companies had to embrace technology: "There is no room for paper trails or data silos," he said, adding that the only way to get a "full view of the reinsurance picture" was to have a complete electronic infrastructure in place.

The technology being built by Mr. Letts' company uses a digital personal assistant to find data on command, but the system can only work if all information is electronically available.

Because of an industry-wide push towards more developed electronic access to data, panel moderator Sarah Goddard, who is the editor of Global Reinsurance magazine, asked if the market might reach the stage where insurers and reinsurers were placing business face-to-face, and not through a broker as happens now.

Julian James, director of Worldwide Markets at London insurance market Lloyd's, said at least from a Lloyd's perspective doing away with brokers wasn't on the cards: "At Lloyd's we have no plans to discontinue using third party intermediaries for distribution," he said.

Mr. James did say, however, that this wasn't to say that Lloyd's was shying away from technology. He anecdotally told of Lord Levene's horror, when he was appointed last year as chairman, when he discovered that hod-carriers ran around the market clutching stacks of files.

He said Lord Levene said, right off the bat, that practice would have to be replaced with technology or "there is no way we can be a market of the future".

Mr. James added that this was not seen from the perspective of `what will it cost', but from the view that we cannot compete if we don't upgrade our systems.

Another panellist, Montpelier Re CEO Tony Taylor, believed to be participating in RI3K's pilot scheme along with a number of other Bermuda companies, said there was a need for a "higher level of data" to satisfy board's who don't want to miss any piece of the puzzle. But Mr. Taylor agreed that brokers were integral to the business process: "They are a feature of the reinsurance market," he said.