ACORD and Lloyd’s Market Association Unveil New Risk Exposure Standards

London, July 16, 2003 – The addition of Lloyd’s Market Associations’ (LMA) data elements and guidelines for the Commercial Property, Household, Onshore Energy and Fine Art business to ACORD’s global data standards was announced today by the insurance standards association.

As part of the ACORD standards process, these requirements have been validated by London brokers and company underwriters and were formally voted on and approved, by ACORD members earlier this month.

“The events of 9/11 made it very clear, whether natural disasters or man-made tragedies, the insurance and reinsurance industries needed a consistent approach to the provision of risk location data in order to establish the market’s exposure accurately,” said Phil Brown, standards manager, ACORD. “A goal of working with LMA and other organizations was to develop a standard way of processing risk location data in an effort to provide more efficient transactions when determining the market’s exposure to catastrophes.”

This standard will allow risk managers, brokers and carriers to seamlessly provide their data to one another. It also prevents the re-keying of the same data each time it passes through each of these points on the insurance value chain.

Gregory Maciag, CEO and president, ACORD added, “Using a common standard allows all parties in the insurance value chain to receive better information resulting in a greater understanding of their exposure and saving time and effort in reformatting data.”

To aid in industry implementation, the new requirements have been split into two different views and are represented in Implementation Guides. Those Implementation Guides represent the data in both spreadsheet and XML technology, and will soon be available on ACORD’s web site (www.acord.org).

The Binding Authority Reporting Implementation Guide accommodates the Property and Household lines of business for US-based risks. The standard represents data on an as-at basis and includes location and value information.

The Exposure Reporting Implementation Guide accommodates the Property line of business (open market). This standard also represents data on an as-at basis, and includes location, values and limits/deductibles information for international risks.

To reap the benefits of these new standards, the opportunity to participate in the Pilot Implementation Group Meetings is ongoing. For more information on how to get involved, contact Phil Brown via email at [email protected].

About ACORD: Based in New York, ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) is a global, nonprofit insurance association whose mission is to facilitate the development and use of standards for the insurance, reinsurance and related financial services industries. With offices in London as well, ACORD accomplishes its mission by remaining an objective, independent advocate for sharing information among diverse platforms. ACORD Standards and services improve efficiency and expand market reach. Affiliated with ACORD are hundreds of insurance and reinsurance companies, and thousands of agents and brokers, related financial services organizations, software providers, and industry organizations worldwide.