ACORD standards
Data exchange standards and standard forms developed since 1970 by a non-profit association, allowing insurers, brokers and reinsurers to exchange information without re-keying.
A single risk passes through many hands: the insured, the broker, one or more insurers, their reinsurers, delegated administrators. If each uses its own format, each transmission requires re-keying, a source of cost and error. ACORD, a non-profit association founded in the United States in 1970, develops common standards. In the United States, its paper then digital forms became the standard language of property and casualty insurance: certificates of insurance, applications, loss notices. Worldwide, its electronic messaging standards structure exchanges between brokers, insurers and reinsurers, notably in the London market and reinsurance, for placement orders, technical accounts and claims. A standard's value lies in its adoption: a perfect format no one uses is worthless. That is the permanent difficulty of a fragmented market where each player has its legacy systems. Data standardization is nonetheless gaining new importance with automation and AI: extraction and automated underwriting tools work all the better when data are structured at source. For an analyst, knowing these standards helps explain why some market modernizations advance and others stall.
Textbook case: a London broker sends a treaty's technical accounts to ten reinsurers. Thanks to an ACORD-format message, each loads them directly into its systems; before, each reinsurer re-keyed the document, and keying discrepancies delayed settlements by weeks.
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