Acord, Canadian Group Work To Standardize XML Usage.

Acord, a nonprofit developer of technology standards for the insurance and financial-services industries in the United States, and Canada's Centre for Study of Insurance Operations will work together on a single standard in North America for extensible markup language, a key to electronic commerce.

Toronto-based CSIO is responsible for the development and maintenance of the property/casualty insurance industry's electronic data interchange standards in Canada, and achieving a standard XML approach simplifies cross-border exchanges of information.

Acord's XML efforts include standards for a number of life and financial-services transactions, property/casualty lines and surety.

"The more people who use the standard, the more valuable the standard is," said Margaret Lucas, a spokeswoman for Pearl River, N.Y.-based Acord. "We are building alliances with other entities that use standards, trying to avoid duplicate standards."

XML is a standard computer language that allows users to create tags for each piece of information on a Web page. It's the catalyst for single-entry, multiple-company interface, something long sought by agents who will be able to enter information into a system once, submit a coverage request to several insurers and receive quotes back quickly.

It's a way to easily transfer data between disparate systems, allowing insurers and agents to easily transact business electronically, therefore increasing productivity while reducing cost.

The Acord and CSIO collaboration will initially develop standards for personal-lines transactions. Other transaction types to be developed include billing inquiry, claims-status inquiry, first notice of loss, policy change, new business and quotes.