IBM has announced it is donating technology assets, includingits IAA Business Object/Data Model and the IAA ProductSpecification Diagram (PSD) Notation, to help promote insuranceindustry standards.

These technology assets that are built combining IBM hardware,software, and research will be donated to the Association forCooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), anonprofit standards development organization serving the insuranceand financial services industries.

The announcement is building on an effort to encouragecollaboration and drive innovation in the insurance industry. Theadoption of standardized business processes and models will make iteasier for insurers to work with agents, brokers, and other datapartners.

The overall contribution represents a significant donation ofintellectual property associated with IBM's insurance industrymodels. The donated models are from IBM's Insurance ApplicationArchitecture (IAA), the company's insurance business, and ITarchitecture framework. IAA is developed continually by IBM incollaboration with 100 insurance companies around the world and hasbeen licensed by more than 200 insurers worldwide. IAA BusinessObject/Data Model, coupled with the existing ACORD InformationModel, will form the building blocks for the next version of theACORD Information Model.

"Over the past year, ACORD with previous donations and memberparticipation, created the initial Information Model in an effortto provide an industry-owned model," says John Kellington, ACORD'ssenior vice president. "IBM's donation will allow ACORD to leverageIBM's 20 years of experience in building an insurance industrymodel to further develop the ACORD Information Model. Theconsolidation of the two models will be available to the industryparticipants for future innovation."

IAA is part of IBM's Industry Models portfolio, a comprehensivefamily of data, process, and service models that are widely usedacross industries. Going forward, IBM will continue to work closelywith ACORD to align IBM's IAA models with ACORD's standardsportfolio. In addition, implementation guides and supporting toolswill be issued by ACORD to foster the adoption and expansion of theframework.

"The synergy of IAA and ACORD working together to create full,robust, flexible insurance assets will aid the ACORD standardsgroup to leverage an insurance industry blueprint with a fulloperational payload. In this case, both assets will be stronger forthis collaboration," says Michael Daugherty, president of theindependent IBM Industry Models User's Group and architect atLiberty Mutual Agency Markets Information Services.

"The ACORD Framework models will give insurers a flexible set ofindustry-developed assets to help accelerate the global adoption ofkey industry concepts," says Mark Lewis, Global Insurance Industrygeneral manager at IBM. "Collaboratively aligning market-leadingproducts such as IBM's IAA with ACORD's Framework will increase thevalue IAA can deliver to the industry and is consistent with IBM'sstrategy of fostering open standards organizations to create growthand innovation."