PEARL RIVER, NY – August 13, 2007 – Taking a major step to answer an industry-wide need for standardization for the producer appointment process, ACORD (www.acord.org) announced the release of the first standardized producer appointment forms.
The new approved forms are:
- 817 – Producer Appointment Form, Appointment Section
- 818 – Producer Appointment Form, Background Questions
- 819 – Additional Appointment Or Termination
These forms are the result of a cooperative effort by carriers, producers and solution providers within the ACORD Producer Appointment Working Group. Robert Hamburger, vice president of agency services for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies and co-chair of the Working Group stated, “the release of these first three producer appointment forms shows how much we can accomplish when we work together, across the industry, to solve issues that affect us all.”
“Standardizing the appointment forms will help to bring increased efficiencies to this historically cumbersome process. Once these forms are widely implemented we will be able to use them for multiple carriers,” said Diana Ivey, senior vice president of Marsh’s Global Compliance Group.
Now that the forms have been approved and released, it’s essential that industry members start adopting and implementing them. The goal is to achieve the same efficiencies with these producer appointment forms as the industry has with the more than 650 other ACORD standardized forms.
“This is a major step forward, but hardly the end. Now we need to get even more industry involvement. Whether it’s by implementation, advocacy or working group participation, the more voices heard the better,” added Deborah Gregory, vice president and director of producer licensing for Lockton Companies LLC and co-chair of the Working Group, saying that “we hope to have more people at our meetings taking part in future development of forms and XML and striving for efficiency improvements in the area of producer appointments.”
“Standardizing these forms will go a long way toward helping our customers improve not only their efficiency, but also their compliance capabilities. It will be easier and more cost effective across the whole industry once everyone is using the same, consistent verbiage and information on producer appointment forms,” said Tim Owen, director of product management at Sircon Corporation.
To help industry members gain a fuller understanding of the forms and their use and benefits, an FAQ has been released from ACORD. It’s available at http://www.acord.org/webfiles/standards/appointment_faq.pdf.
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, solution providers, and industry organizations worldwide. Visit www.acord.org.
