Never shy about expressing his views on the harsh realities facing insurers and brokers, Dennis Mahoney, chairman and CEO at Aon Global, based in Bermuda, told traditional players straight out during last week's appearances at the ACORD London Forum that more efficient capital market players will bury them if they don't rid themselves of the paper transactions weighing them down, as well as adopt standards for electronic trading. A complete report follows.

The conference was lively and presented attendees with many challenges I'll share with you here over the next couple of weeks. But Mr. Mahoney, appearing on two separate ocassions, made the most noise with his blunt assessment of the industry's long-term prospects if insurers don't wake up and smell the Starbucks coffee being sipped by those trading on their laptops rather than lugging around mounds of paper at Lloyd's and other key markets.

Indeed, he warned that traditional insurers might quickly be replaced by capital market players if carriers dont work together to drive costs and inefficiencies out of their business processes by adopting standards and going electronic.