Data Standards Give Life To Life Insurance By definition, data standards are a set of rules and guidelines that provide a common framework for communication. Much like the human body, this common framework, or skeleton, needs to be supported by something that has the ability to pump information out to its various parts and provide life support to the body as it grows.

At the heart of ACORDs Life Standards Program is the ACORD Life Data Model, and it has, by its nature, allowed for data exchange in the life insurance industry to become stronger as it grows into different phases of its life.

If you think of the Standards Program as a living body and the data model as its heart, you can see how the Life Standards Program has been able to grow from a desktop integration standard into the world of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) that enables data sharing across multiple platforms. ACORD XML is the electronic language of the insurance Internet, facilitating real-time, cross-platform, peer-to-peer communication created as a result of the industrys need for a more efficient means of doing business. The data model has made this evolution much simpler than it would have been if starting from scratch.

Recommended For You

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader

Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.