Prima Solutions, an insurance software solution provider, and ACORD, the nonprofit insurance standards organization, announced that Prima is contributing its insurance information model to ACORD.

ACORD accepts intellectual property contributions from member companies on behalf of the industry and integrates them through the standards development process to enhance and expand ACORD standards. Prima's contribution will provide a jump start to ACORD's information model effort.

Prima's information model is the result of years of research and development from their insurance and object technology specialists. The information model is part of Prima Solutions' Insurance Business Component Suite (Prima IBCS) and represents an enterprise-wide data semantic of insurance information.

Gregory A. Maciag, president & CEO, ACORD, states, "This contribution will accelerate the development of the ACORD Information Model, which is a major facet of the ACORD Standards Framework. The information model represents standards data from all aspects of the insurance industry including property, casualty, surety, life, annuities, health, reinsurance, and large commercial. Prima's contribution to this development is enormously valuable."

Through this contribution, ACORD will develop its framework and the Prima information model will enable ACORD to reach its goal of more consistent and traceable standards throughout the development process, across all business lines and all geographic boundaries.

"Prima believes that both technology and industry-specific standards are essential if clients are to solve their collaboration and integration problems and accelerate their business strategies--whether they are to run, grow or transform their businesses," says Hugues Delannoy, president and CEO of Prima. "As powered in part by our contribution, the development of new and enhanced open standards by ACORD provides game-changing opportunities for the insurance industry."

Prima will work closely with ACORD and its various committees to integrate the reference model content into the existing ACORD standards. ACORD will issue implementation guides and other tools to assist the insurance industry in the adoption, expansion and customization of the information model.