Brokers still critical of SSP Pure reliability more than a year after the outage

Brokers have argued that SSP’s Pure system is still unreliable more than a year after the outage which caused widespread chaos for customers for a number of weeks.

Commenting after CEO Steve Lathrope’s comments on SSP’s 2016/17 financial results users have alleged that they are still experiencing problems with the platform.

James Woollam, who wrote an open letter to SSP criticising communication at the height of the crisis, advised that communication and reliability were still issues.

“The system’s reliability has never returned and the engagement has not been there,” he stated.

“Communication was really poor and that has just not improved.”

Transfer
Neil Kerkhove, of broker Warwick Davis, which moved to Acturis after the outage, hit out at the provider and the way it handled the transfer.

He explained: “It’s all very well the new CEO stating “we tried to do the right thing”, but as a broker directly affected by the outage, this is not so.

“We only received one month’s licence fees in compensation and then we were quoted £10,000 + VAT to have our data sent in a readable format so that we could arrange a data transfer to Acturis.”

Service
One anonymous broker reported: “In my experience the system never worked well and they promised it would come back bigger and better.

“The service is still appalling and it takes half an hour for people to pick up when I call them…And there is not a single week when I don’t have to call them to report an issue.”

Speaking as a broker that still uses SSP’s Pure platform Woollam remarked that he “did not recognise” what the CEO said nor had he witnessed any of the changes noted by Lathrope in his discussion with Insurance Age last week.

Woollam was also unimpressed with Lathrope’s talk of investment into the business. He argued that the figures only showed a small increase in investment compared to the previous year and added: “I would have preferred to have seen more investment.”

The results showed research and development spending of £8.0m in 2016/17 compared to £7.1m the previous year.

Unforgivable
Kerkhove concluded: “What happened was unforgivable in itself, but the way we were treated during the crisis and after beggars belief.”

Responding to the latest comments Lathrope insisted the business has “invested significantly in our infrastructure, monitoring and people since the outage and are continuing to do so, with a massive investment planned”.

He dismissed claims that the Pure service is not reliable and reminded brokers that SSP has passed the Biba audit which was set up to assess the robustness of technology providers in the wake of the outage.

Lathrope stated: “Service levels are already much improved, which was reflected in us passing the Biba audit.”

Development
Turning to communication Lathrope said SSP had focused heavily on improving communication with customers to ensure they are getting the greatest value from their system. He also pointed out that a number of brokers have been involved with the development of SSP’s new system which launched last summer and is “on track” for delivery.

He also specifically responded to claims that exiting brokers were charged to have their data put into readable formats.

He commented: ”SSP has openly liaised with each broker individually affected by the outage, and has been successful in retaining a large number of these brokers.

“Where brokers have chosen to move away, there may be a charge associated with extracting their data in the format required by the new provider. Charges of this nature are commonplace within the industry.”

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