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Jan 23, 2025

ACORD Releases Updates to Reference Architecture Facets

ACORD has released updates to the three data-related facets of the Reference Architecture, which are the Data Model, Information Model, and Business Glossary.  

Information Model

The Information Model is a comprehensive framework of all fundamental insurance concepts, such as Policy, Product, Party, and Claims, and their relationships. This release provides enhancements to the Activity, Assessment and Condition, Event, and Physical Object subject areas. Here are the highlights:

  • Travel is added to insurable event for non-physical objects. This will allow carriers to describe the travel event for a specific claim as well as in a policy. 
  • In the insurance industry, a police investigation may involve a carrier to detect and pursue insurance investigation. Police Investigation is added to capture related result. 
  • Insurers incur losses as a result of coverage related to pandemics and outbreaks of disease. A new event is created to handle Disease Outbreak, such as Covid. 
  • Activity Specification is added to allow for predefined rules and conventions that govern how an activity is performed. For instance, customer support may have predefined specifications for questions that will allow anyone to clearly understand the customer's needs and explain things in a way the customer can understand.  

This release also includes several examples of Financial Services Agreement Subtypes. The worked examples depicted within the Information Model serve as a practical illustration of how to apply data modeling concepts to a specific scenario. The examples help users understand the process better and learn how to model data for their own projects. 

  • Temporary Insurance Agreement is an example that depicts a temporary insurance agreement. An insurance binder is a temporary contract that provides insurance coverage before a permanent policy is issued.
  • You can get quotes from a broker, agent, or company website. Website Quote via Mobile Device example is developed to show requests for a quote from a company website. 
  • Policy Placement - Personal Auto Quote is an example of an auto insurance quote. 

Data Model

The Data Model, which is a logical data model of entities and relationships, has also been updated to include enhancements to the same subject areas as the Information Model in this release.

Business Glossary

The Business Glossary is a dictionary of terms that consists of insurance concepts and includes definitions, usages, and references. This release of the ACORD Business Glossary updates existing terms for clarification and adds new terms to align with the ACORD Information Model.

To download Release 2.12, or for more information about the ACORD Reference Architecture, please visit www.acord.org/RA.