Some technology is focused on the life/annuity market, some onthe property/casualty market, and some on the reinsurance market.And sometimes, it’s just about the technology. For ACORD, that grayarea has a place to go and thrive—the Common ServicesCommittee.

ACORD has always concentrated on standards for the various linesof business, because they have a lot of synergy and there arecomponents that are similar within the different lines.

As insurers move beyond the data model of those particular linesof business and discuss issues such as service enablement, documentretrieval, process choreography, those particular areas aren’t linespecific, explains Jim Brain, director of enterprise architecturefor CNA Surety and leader of the Common Services Committee forACORD.

“Because we had everything lined up in the particular lines,there has been a need to have another area for all those thingsthat are not line specific,” says Brain. “Where should we putthat?”

In the past, ACORD has had a joint technical group for thiscommon ground and the Common Services Committee is the nextiteration of that domain, according to Brain.

“Joint technical group wasn’t as descriptive a term, so we movedto a new nomenclature,” says Brain. “Common services is a place wecan put things like AML, the new way of representing the data modelfor the P&C area. There’s also ACORD messaging service. Thenewest version of that is called the ACORD Web Services Profile, soyou can use Web services regardless of what line you are in and howyou can transmit that business data through Web services.”

If carriers communicate with their business partners through aWeb services interaction, Brain believes they need to adhere toindustry standards and also include business data that follows theACORD standards.

“That’s a good indicator of the pieces in common services totake standards and either create them or leverage standards thatalready are available in the industry,” he says.

Standards groups such as OASIS, W3C, and IEPF aren’t insurancespecific, but ACORD can utilize those standards and createguidelines and specifications that stipulate which of thosenon-insurance-specific standards are to be used and how they are tobe used in order to transmit or receive insurance-related data,explains Brain.

“By extension, anytime there is an opportunity for us toleverage a standard in the grayer technology space—even if it’s notsomething ACORD came up with—Common Services wants to be at theheart of that,” he says.

As an example, one of the insurance lines could ask the commonservices group for a way to handle currency or payments. ShouldACORD create a standard or have the common services group eitherset up a working group to create a standard related to that domainof concern or should it find industry standards related toaccepting payments electronically so carriers can leverage thosestandards and specify their use within the ACORD environment, asksBrain.

MORE COMMONALITY

Brain believes that even within the individual lines of businessinsurers can create more commonality. He explains all three lineshave the concept of a person or a party related to the insuranceproduct.

“We always need to capture similar information—who they are,where they live, various contact information—so there iscommonality there among the programs and that’s somewhat insurancespecific,” he says. “We may need to capture other non-insurancerelated data, so we could use an insurance specific representationof that for all of our business lines as opposed to right now wherewe have a concept of a party from the life/health/annuity space, adifferent concept from the property/casualty/surety space, andanother in the reinsurance space.”

The problem with the individual line approach is most evidentfor a multi-line carrier who has to manage the data in threedifferent standards, convert to one of those standards or come upwith some internal standard.

“You would still have to convert if you are talking to anotherbusiness partner in the standard that is represented by thatpartner’s line of business,” says Brain. “There’s not a necessityto do that, but it is part of the historical perspective of how theACORD lines grew into the standards they are today. Over time therewill be a push to create some commonality, particularly beyond thebusiness data.”

Common services can help carriers that have business processesthat have to be handled in order to transact business, explainsBrain. Those processes can be represented in a standard businessprocess language.

“Over time I think the amount of similar data that can beleveraged among the different programs becomes a larger componentso in the end you have a common component and business dataportions that are specific to the various lines of business,” hesays. “You are not going to have an auto object for yourlife/health/annuity business so that rightly stays in theproperty/casualty standard and is specific to that standard. Thepart that can be similar we should try and leverage from a commonservices perspective. That just adds to the amount of commonalitythrough all the business lines and offers more opportunity for thecommon service program.”

NON-SPECIFIC GROUPS

When discussing ACORD standards you are talking about a verticalindustry so those standards are at a very high level, just as thereare for other industries, explains Brain. The higher the level ofthe standards the less you can leverage outside the domain, headds.

“The highest level of standard isn’t going to be something wecan leverage in common services,” Brain says. “But as you move downto lower levels, if they perform Web transactions or Web services,which is common now, they probably will use the underlyingtechnologies that have been put forth by groups like Oasis, more ofa technology group as opposed to a vertical.”

What it comes down to is there are certain things that areunique to the insurance space and they are not going to berepresented anywhere else but ACORD, according to Brain, but theimportant part of common services is they need to draw a line thatstates what makes insurance standards unique.

“Whatever that is, it is something we need to manage, own andenhance,” says Brain. “But those things that aren’t unique to theinsurance business—technology components or lower-levelfunctionality—we should be looking at ways to leverage thosestandards as opposed to reinventing the wheel.”