The Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD) is a non-profit organization in the insurance industry. ACORD publishes and maintains an archive of standardized forms. ACORD has also developed a comprehensive library of electronic data standards with more than 1200 standardized transaction types to support insurance data exchange between trading partners. However, ACORD is not an insurance company and does not process claims or provide insurance coverage.

History

Established in 1970 as a non-profit organization, ACORD was formed by insurance carriers and agents focused on building efficiencies in the United States property and casualty insurance market. Originally named Agent Company Operations Research and Development (ACORD), the organization initially aimed to standardize carriers' many proprietary forms for new business and claims submission. In the late 1970s, ACORD began developing electronic standards to complement its form standards. ACORD subsequently expanded its forms and electronic data standards beyond property and casualty insurance to encompass life and annuity, surety, and reinsurance markets. In 2021, a subsidiary of the company, ACORD Solutions Group, received the Insurance Innovator Award from PropertyCasualty360 for its digital solution ADEPT (ACORD Data Exchange Platform & Translator); the award is given to new technologies that are considered to be facilitating faster and more accurate data exchange in the insurance industry.

Current practices

Today, many of the forms and electronic data standards utilized by the insurance and related industries, both in the United States and several countries across the globe, were developed by ACORD. Over 850 variants of these forms are available. The

Lloyd's of London Lloyd's of London, generally known simply as Lloyd's, is a insurance and reinsurance market located in London, England. Unlike most of its competitors in the industry, it is not an insurance company; rather, Lloyd's is a corporate body gover ...

insurance market uses ACORD standards for messaging between counterparties. Lloyd's Core Data Record, an attempt to standardized data exchange, is based on ACORD standards. In 2018, ACORD partnered with DataPro on the production of new software that would streamline the implementation of insurance data standards. The project aimed to improve

data integration Data integration refers to the process of combining, sharing, or synchronizing data from multiple sources to provide users with a unified view. There are a wide range of possible applications for data integration, from commercial (such as when a ...

between legacy data systems and a new wave of automated data processing systems. ACORD also provided expertise on digital data standards in collaboration with

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, ISN, and

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to streamline the proof of insurance process with the help of

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

technology. The partnership attempts to eliminate the time- and labor-intensive paper insurance certificates that dominate the global insurance market. A pilot project for the new platform, called Insurwave, launched in the spring of 2018, uses the blockchain to create a

distributed ledger A distributed ledger (also called a shared ledger or distributed ledger technology or DLT) is a system whereby replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data is geographically spread (distributed) across many sites, countries, or institutions. I ...

of insurance data and to automate the recording of shipping information for maritime transactions. ACORD has also worked with the

Centre for Study of Insurance Operations CSIO, the Centre for Study of Insurance Operations, is the Canadian property and casualty insurance industry's nonprofit association of insurers, brokers and software providers. Much of its work is in the development of data standards, especially ...

on numerous initiatives, including the development of North American

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data standards and creating a telematics data standard. ACORD is headquartered in Little Falls, New Jersey, and maintains an office in London, UK.

References

{{reflist Information technology organizations Standards organizations Insurance industry organizations Organizations established in 1970 Organizations based in New Jersey