Gregory Maciag

ACORD-LOMA Video

Microsoft at ACORD-LOMA

Have insurance executives been in a vault for the last 20 years?

Think Global Act Local

I think that decision makers are beginning to see that the “think global and act local” formula has enormous power in the contemporary business landscape. This attitude gives them access to incredibly powerful tools without requiring matching levels of investment. It enables them to change what needs to be changed, rather than buying into a wholesale reformation that overrides the distinctive characteristics of their organizations. Organizations can take what they need from standards without sacrifing their uniqueness. Organizations and markets have different qualities.  So it’s the power to differentiate that we’re offering with ACORD Standards, not a sentence of uniformity.

Lloyd's Exchange Trade Fair

Lloyd's held a trade fair today for suppliers to demonstrate their products that connect to the Lloyd's Exchange. The Exchange is a network created by Lloyd's to facilitate messaging traffic between brokers and syndicates. It is now in pilot and all traffic is ACORD Standards compliant. 
Other organizations are using the network as well. It is primarily for Placing business at the present time with back office messaging being a future deliverable. We are doing a series of interviews in London this week with key executives to provide an update on the pilot and plans for the future. I will post a link to those videos when final.

NAIC - NIPR Using ACORD Standards

The National Insurance Producer Repository (NIPR), part of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) began to map ACORD messages in AML (ACORD Messaging Library) to the repository.  The development of AML was key for them.  The NIPR repository covers all lines and leveraging the all-lines approach of AML made the difference.

The team is hard at work in creating messages that will serve mutual purposes, allowing vendors, agencies and carriers submit producer licensing status and updates straight to NIPR in Kansas City.  NIPR then forwards the message to the states.

The National Insurance Producer Repository (NIPR), part of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) began to map ACORD messages in AML (ACORD Messaging Library) to the repository.  The development of AML was key for them.  The NIPR repository covers all lines and leveraging the all-lines approach of AML made the difference.

The team is hard at work in creating messages that will serve mutual purposes, allowing vendors, agencies and carriers submit producer licensing status and updates straight to NIPR in Kansas City.  NIPR then forwards the message to the states.

ACORD-LOMA Orlando

The final attendance count was shy of 1,700 people, not bad considering the economics today and a mild swine flu panic courtesy of Mr. Biden.  As usual, most of the feedback was positive. Exhibitors had less traffic but stressed that key people did attend. In fact, the number of organizations represented had not changed as much as the number of people from each organization.  Good news. Members want to remain connected. As usual, we will be reaching out to everyone to get their feedback. If you attended, send me an email with your thoughts.

China Life Ltd on ACORD Board

Pictured are Francis Chung, ACORD China Representative; John Leonard, CEO of MEMIC and ACORD Chairman; and Frank Liu, CIO of China Life Ltd from Beijing China. Mr. Liu has been elected to the ACORD Board of Directors and serves as liaison for China and the Asia-Pacific region.

The McClaughlan Group

ACORD 2009 Memberhip Report

We are preparing for the May 17 ACORD-LOMA Insurance Systems Forum. Hope to see you there. Here is our 2009 Membership Report. It highlights some of our more recent industry initiatives.

Download 2009 ACORD Membership Report

ACORD Standards in London

As you know, ACORD has been working in London for two decades and the merger with WISe in 2001 was the beginning a of real revolution on many fronts.  Contract Certainty was pursued by the FSA (Financial Services Authority) and the MRG (Market Reform Group) as part of a large scale overhaul of the market.  ACORD's international standards became a key ingredient in the effort. Here is a recent column from Insurance Day regarding compliance with ACORD Standards.  2009 May 5 Insurance Day

Webinars for Agents on Real-Time

As a result of strong agent and carrier interest, the Real Time/Download Campaign (www.getrealtime.org) has added session dates to its monthly webinars titled, “Real Time: The Next Major Advance in Agency Workflow.”  The hour-long sessions provide independent agency owners and employees a free, convenient opportunity to understand how to leverage a wave of change underway that improves customer service and agency profitability. Upcoming sessions are scheduled for May 6 and June 3.

More than 1,000 insurance professionals have participated in the webinars already this year. In each session, presenters explain real time, demonstrate its capabilities, discuss benefits, and outline steps agencies and brokerages can take to implement real time or increase its usage. They also discuss the increasing importance of download, which completes the round trip of data between agency and carrier.

The free webinar, designed for principals, systems professionals and CSRs, runs an hour long, with time available for questions and answers. The webinars are relevant to agencies no matter which agency management system they use, as virtually all offer real-time functionality. Live demos of real-time quoting and inquiry transactions are shown. These vendor-specific demos are intended generally to show the efficiencies of real-time workflows.

Attendees can to listen to the audio through computer headsets or speakers or by dialing a long-distance number. A recorded version is available on demand at getrealtime.org.

Agents can register for the May 6 event, which will run from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. EST, at this link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/771210636. To register for the June 3 session, which also will run from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. EST, use this link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/770965005. To see the presentation outline, go to www.getrealtime.org/active/powerpoints.asp. Information to register for other webinars will be posted at the site later this spring.

Launched in April 2007, the Real Time/Download Campaign (www.getrealtime.org) is dedicated to improving the competitiveness of the independent agency distribution channel. The campaign goal is to double the number of real-time transactions each year.

Real time is the ability to click on a button from a client file in the agency management system or comparative rater for immediate access to carrier information on that client. The transaction may be a quote, billing inquiry, claim inquiry/loss run, policy view, endorsement or request for information. This approach provides a single workflow for servicing or quoting.

Campaign participants include agents, brokers, carriers, technology providers, user groups, and agent and industry associations. The campaign is sponsored financially by ACORD, ACT, AMS Services, AMS Users’ Group, Applied Systems, Applied Systems Client Network (ASCnet), Artizan Internet Services, AUGIE, EMC Insurance Companies, Grange Insurance, IIABA, IVANS, Liberty Mutual Agency Markets, MetLife Auto & Home, Nationwide/Allied, PIA of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut & New Hampshire, SilverPlume Rating Solutions, Strategic Insurance Software (SIS), The Hartford, and Westfield Insurance.

Architectual Solutions Overcome Legacy Impediments

Many organizations in our industry are happily or otherwise locked into their legacy systems. They worry about the growing antiquity of their systems and their able to protect the skills needed to maintain those systems. At the same time they usually have a primitive economic model of their legacy systems – ironic, when you consider that “legacy” normally indicates some kind of transferred value.

Every system becomes a legacy system. All systems have their natural life, and there comes a point where it is uneconomic to prolong that life. The move toward systems composed of collaborating services, where the system boundary is a matter of current operating policy rather than a fixed, technical limit, means that the scope of legacy value is shifting down the scale from monoliths to components. This will make it much easier for us to make decommissioning and replacement decisions.

As we have seen already, the opposition between acquiring systems from outside the organization and building them within the organization is beginning to fade. Whichever side of this coin an organization favors today, it can choose to abandon the dichotomy and recognize that this decision is one to be triggered at an atomic level, not a policy level.

The patchwork technology stance dictates, essentially, that there will be no theory of technology acquisition or management. Tools will be thrown at jobs as the jobs arise. Bridges will be built in retrospect. Future generations will deal with the toxicity.

There are more of these organizations around than you or I would like to think. They are dying off as boards discover the massive waste involved in this haphazard stance and diagnose the organizations' inflexibility in terms of its poor technology choices. The only cultural factor that has kept this stance on life-support is ignorance of technology among business leaders, and this, thankfully, continues to evaporate.

Organizations with a preference for architectural solutions, common guidelines and clear accountability are in the vanguard of professional IT practice and are the most amenable to the thoroughgoing adoption of standards. ACORD Standards can, in fact, be said to be the outcome of the governance stance, rather than a factor in its emergence, albeit that standards have been built up by concerned and visionary individuals and teams rather than brewed by corporate governance teams.

ACE Designation Update

The experts involved in creating the ACORD Certified Expert Designation Program met in Pearl River this week.  They are working with Applied Measurement Professionals on a framework to create questions for examinations.

Pictured are Jamie Mazur (PilotFish), Pat Slutske (Excalibur Consulting), Danny Breidenbach (AMP), Yolanda Austin (ACORD), Alan Stitzer (ACORD), Beth Grossman (ACORD), Frank Neugebauer (ACORD), Fran Clarke (IVANS), Cliff Chaney (ACORD), Trudy Mandeville (TechCom), Serge Cayron (ACORD), Frank Sentner (Soulware). Beth Grossman is our AVP of Training & Education and heads this effort. For more informaation, contact her at bgrossman@acord.org

Pick-Up Your Free Copy in Orlando

It has been four years since we released "The Business Information Revolution" at our conference in Orlando. My new book addresses the challenges that members face when implementing standards and the opportunities that come as a result.  It is divided into 8 sections: Value, Enterprise, Strategy, Customers, Change, Implementation, Technology and Architecture.  I also included a comprehensive Appendix that provides current information on our process and membership.

My purpose was to wrap industry standards with real world thinking and acknowledge the emerging real-time business challenges that we face today.  Copies of "The Real Time World" (350 pages) will be distributed to participants in Orlando (May 17-19) at the ACORD-LOMA Conference. Register HERE.

 

AMS User Group Honors Service

The AMS User Group held its annual conference this past month and honored individuals for their service. Included in the group were folks that work with ACORD very closely. Mele Fuller received the Wade Dunbar Award.  Cal Durland from ACORD, Lind Rollings, Steve Aronson and Jeff Yates received presidential citations. AMS Awards