Mr. Bergstein, vice president of The Capacity Group, added, “The need for agents' participation in standards development becomes obvious when you consider it is the agents and brokers that will be the end users of much of the systems created from the standards. Traditionally we've tried to get agents to attend Subcommittee, but we realized it was not making the best use of their time; they don't need to be involved at that technical stage.

“AARG's goal, therefore, is to involve agents at the appropriate point, which most often is at the working group level.” Working groups meet via teleconferences several times between the semi-annual Subcommittee meetings, said ACORD.

AARG will serve as a clearinghouse for requests for agency expertise, anticipate where it is needed, and match skills to particular standards efforts, ACORD added.

The group's initial focus will be working with the property and casualty standards efforts, with attention paid to commercial lines, personal lines and general workflow issues, noted ACORD. Plans to work with the life, reinsurance and surety lines of business will be added in the future.

More information on AARG is available online in the Subcommittee General Session presentation, slides 16-32, on the ACORD Web site (www.ACORD.org). Agents or brokers of any size who would like to volunteer for AARG should email [email protected], said ACORD.

ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) is a global, nonprofit insurance association whose mission is to facilitate the development and use of standards for the insurance, reinsurance and related financial services industries.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, December 30, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.