FinServ Blog

Phil mentions that it makes perfect sense to ensure the standards are in place to communicate with business partners, regulators, IRS, etc.  This is exactly what the NAVA group is doing.  The key issue this community faces is that they are doing business with external brokers.   It's essentially all 3rd party trading partners in that world.  So NAVA's choice to build off the ACORD base is a logical one.  

I think the work of defining a common model and related messages that can be used across the industry for external communication and adapted for internal system-to-system purposes is a perfect fit for ACORD.  And ACORD has for the most part stayed out of defining XML architectures that would force particular tool and platform choices, which is smart.

But ACORD has been making what I feel are 2 critical errors that are forcing companies to look for alternatives to ACORD.  

The first one relates to the general process of how the standards are being developed. This is what Phil referred to when he said "..this reliance [on ACORD] is likely to slow down the whole process. I could be involved in the technical task forces there for some time to come!"  Very true. The working groups work very slowwwly.  There was a time when the groups had 6 month charters that were started and completed in that timeframe. This was possible because ACORD staff did the brunt of the work of gathering requirements, doing research, coming up with possible solutions, and providing strong facilitation so that the discussions could come to closure.  This has all but disappeared. ACORD now expects the volunteers to do all this instead, which is deadly to getting something done.  It's a huge dichotomy that ACORD keeps raising membership fees yet reduces the amount of support they provide to the actual technical task forces.

Their 2nd error, though, has potentially an even greater negative impact.  And that is their recent emphasis on business process standards, which was a big focus at the ACORD / LOMA show.  ACORD recently acquired IP from IBM – IBM’s IAA business process models to be specific.  They are now taking resources and members’ time away from the efforts of solving the members’ immediate needs of having a message in place to use between trading partners, and instead are wasting membership dollars and volunteer time to standardize on business processes!?!  That's the last thing that should be standardized.  It’s ‘nice to have’ a little roadmap that says what message should be used where and what messages are not yet defined. And if so compelled, ACORD could get this completed in just a few days.  But a company's business process is their own. They don't need nor should they want ACORD to 'standardize' this area.  

What the members need is the data model and messages defined so that it can be used for whatever the business processes within a company may be.

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Great site! Good luck to it's owner!

pagine piuttosto informative, piacevoli =)

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