Prima Solutions Contributes Model to ACORD

Prima Solutions (www.primasolutions.com), an insurance industry software solution provider and ACORD (www.acord.org), the nonprofit insurance standards organization, announced that Prima Solutions 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 further enhance and expand ACORD standards. Prima's contribution will support ACORD’s own information model effort by providing a significant jump-start.

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 Maciag, president & CEO, ACORD, stated that, “This contribution will accelerate the development of the ACORD Information Model, which is a major facet of the ACORD Standards Framework. The ACORD Information Model represents standards data from all aspects of the insurance industry including Property, Casualty, Surety, Life, Annuities, Health, Reinsurance, and Large Commercial. Prima Solution’s contribution to this development is enormously valuable.”

Through this contribution, ACORD will more rapidly 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 Solutions 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," said Hugues Delannoy, president and CEO of Prima Solutions. "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."

"The linkage of process, components, forms and data around a standard Information Model is a key challenge to both ACORD and to our entire industry which faces the need to redesign and modernize their IT environment in a consistent manner across their business lines and geographies," said John Kellington, senior vice president, ACORD. "This contribution by Prima Solutions demonstrates its commitment to industry standards and to the standards development community in which it operates. It will create a value proposition for the industry that will enable and support industry transformation for growth and survival as well as promote innovative business solutions in a manner that is technology neutral."

Going forward, Prima Solutions 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.