ACORD announced the general release of the ACORD Framework Information Model version 2.0. This is one of the five facets of the ACORD Framework. Over the past eighteen months, the ACORD Framework staff has been working on this new version that is fully re-engineered and brings together two significant member contributions: an Information Model from Prima Solutions and the Business Object Model from IBM.

"This was the result of contributions of time and of effort from many members of the ACORD community and we're grateful to them all for their dedication, hard work, and commitment to this project," says Shane McCullough, chief enterprise architect, ACORD.

"Taking content from both sources and merging them into one cohesive and comprehensive model proved to be challenging but very beneficial to the model itself," says Mark Orlandi, senior business analyst, ACORD. "On the surface, both models had very similar content and basic structures. However, when digging into the details, it became clear that there were subtle differences in design philosophies and basic modeling principles. Staff and members worked together to reconcile these differences and the result is a new and improved version available to the industry."

The Information Model 2.0 represents the concepts and relationships of the insurance industry across all domains. For ACORD, the model will continue to be the basis of all standards development. For members, the model will continue to be used as the basis of application development, for validation of existing models, and as a source of information exchange between business and information technology for example.

"Another factor we considered carefully while working on this harmonization was the existing ACORD Standards. This included the large ACORD Forms Library as well as the XML and EDI data standards," said McCullough. "It was crucial to make decisions that aligned to existing standards to the Model."

Members participating in this effort were also pleased with the outcome. "I firmly believe that the ACORD Information Model will revolutionize our industry's capabilities. Its breadth, scope, detail and purity will help Cincinnati Insurance transform our internal architecture. As the vendor community adopts these concepts, we hope to be able to adopt their solutions more quickly and with fewer integration challenges," says John Kellington, senior vice president and CIO, Cincinnati Financial Corporation.

"We, at Informatica, view the release of the ACORD Information Model 2.0 as a game-changing event for insurance industry," says Boris Bolanov of Informatica. "Broad availability of the enterprise-class reference model allows carriers, software vendors, and service providers to align our respective strategies and move forward together more effectively. We now share a common language and a clear roadmap."

This model is the next step in ACORD's continued commitment to deliver enterprise architecture to the insurance industry. The Information Model provides a variety of practical uses for both the insurance provider community as well as the service provider community. Having a single model representing the insurance industry will prove invaluable to the continued success of global standardization and business-to-business communication.