Agents Can Win Battle For Standards In “Cool Hand Luke,” the sadistic warden kept whining to Paul Newman, who played the rebellious convict, that “what we have here is a failure to communicate.” That complaint echoed in my mind as I covered session after session emphasizing the need for insurance standards last month during ACORD's annual conference in Orlando.

I had not attended the ACORD meeting for a few years, but felt like I'd never left after hearing the same tired pleas for insurers to abandon their shortsighted proprietary systems and adopt universal standards once and for all.

ACORD is the United Nations of insurance, bringing together every segment of the industry (no easy task, since many members are bitter competitors). But like the U.N., ACORD has no authority to impose its agenda unilaterally. Its staff must rely on the cooperation and good faith of insurers, vendors and agent groups. Too often, that good faith and cooperation has been lacking among the industry's superpowers.