Data Standards Give Life To Life Insurance Bydefinition, data standards are a set of rules and guidelines thatprovide a common framework for communication. Much like the humanbody, this common framework, or skeleton, needs to be supported bysomething that has the ability to pump information out to itsvarious parts and provide life support to the body as it grows.

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

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