A blueprint for the short-term insurance industry to anticipate, accommodate and implement the ACORD data standards, and STRIDE data converter into their existing business environments

Abstract

The Short-term insurance (STI) industry in South Africa is a multi-billion Rand industry, and despite economic conditions it is still growing year-on-year. There are currently 22 million short-term policy holders in South Africa (SA), responsible for a R80 Billion gross written premium (GWP). The GWP represents the total premium before commissions for reinsurance and resigning are subtracted. These policy holders are serviced by roughly 19,000 intermediaries (advisers and agents) representing the insurance providers (insurance companies) and insurance underwriters (assessing the risks of the clients) across SA and internationally. Due to the expansion and growth in the STI industry, governance and legislation have followed suit and stricter measures are put in place to protect all stakeholders in the value chain. This includes the clients, the advisors, the intermediaries and eventually the insurers or product providers. One such legislative measure was put in place to ensure that client data is freely shared between insurers and intermediaries / brokers. Short-term insurance companies in South Africa need to exchange customer information between different insurance companies whenever a customer requests it, or as per legislation prescription (monthly, quarterly, etc.). This is not always possible because of the various processes and systems each insurance company uses. Due to complex and non-integrated systems and user-defined formats that are not compatible between all stakeholders, data is sometimes lost or incorrectly transferred between parties. Each insurance company (i.e. Santam, Absa, etc.) rely on a specific standard or data format that allows their client and product data to be translated in between their front-end (quoting) and back-end (administration) systems. This is in most cases unique to a specific company, and would greatly differ between company 1 and company 2. In short this makes any form of data standardization and conversion almost impossible. With the emergence of 3rd party administration software has this been reduced slightly but still requires the insurer or intermediary to migrate all data to this 3rd party system. In the Life and/or Long-term Insurance (LTI) Industry, a similar concern had been addressed many years ago with the establishment of the Astute service. Astute is also an exchange iii service for information that’s done electronically to improve the distribution of data between the relevant parties involved (Astute, 2012). This allowed long-term providers to standardize data so that a uniform lookup could be done across the industry. To solve this problem, ACORD, a data standard for insurance companies were designed to help companies standardize their systems in order to simplify the exchange of data. To implement the ACORD data standard in South Africa, a data transformer entity called STRIDE was created. STRIDE was established to customize the international ACORD standards for use in the South African STI industry. STRIDE was also established to ensure the technology platforms and interchange engines in order to facilitate data transfer between various parties in the STI industry. And lastly STRIDE manages the membership, the standards and the processes behind STI data sharing in the industry. This in itself a daunting situation and many short-term insurance providers are not really sure how to embrace these changes and new technologies. During the execution of this project a blueprint will be designed for companies to clearly understand the consequences and benefits of such a data transformer. The insurer or the intermediaries will be able to use the blueprint to identify a more simple way between the As- Is position and the To-Be states.