ACORD winning community

Every year, ACORD hosts its Awards Ceremony at the ACORD Implementation Forum in October. The ACORD Awards are a prestigious honor, presented to those organisations and individuals who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in Standards development and implementation in the past year, and is recognised throughout the industry and around the globe.

In 2014 ACORD introduced new awards categories for each line of business to recognise early and new adoptions, business process improvements, individual and organisational leadership, global outreach and implementation community excellence.

For the first time the South African community and South African ACORD members walked away with numerous awards, clearly demonstrating the tremendous progress we have made with the creation, stabilisation and implementation of the first SA Short Term Insurance data standard.

Since our first implementation in November 2013, we now have 6 integrated insurers, 20 integrated binder holders and 10 integrated system providers. The data being transacted through the switch increases on a monthly basis, adhering to targeted roll-out plans. All data transactions currently focus on Personal Lines policy data, with planned implementations for 2015 in Commercial Lines policy data, claims notification and bordereaux information. This truly is a great achievement for the industry.

ACORD Director of Global Development, Alan Stitzer stated, “We are so pleased to have recognition for our members in South Africa for their achievements over the past 4 years. This group has truly been a model for other groups with the participation, agile development and implementation of a brand new standard.”

Additionally, ACORD’s Senior Vice President, Global Operations, John Bissell stated, “The adoption of ACORD standards are the foundation stones for a truly efficient, customer focused and future proofed insurance industry and these collective and individual achievements, recognized through these Awards, demonstrates true commitment towards these goals.“

The following ACORD Awards were presented to the South African Short Term community:

ACORD Implementation Community of the Year

This award is given to an ACORD Implementation Community to recognise a group that has made the largest impact in implementing an ACORD Standard over the last year.

Awarded to:

The Southern Africa short term community

ACORD Industry Recognition/Leadership Award – Organisation

This exclusive award is given to an organisation (or individual) demonstrating leadership in the areas of Standards development, advocacy, or implementation. It recognises those members who have gone above and beyond in sharing insurance data or providing consistent data design for specific business capabilities. Recipients have delivered documentation of technological or procedural advancements that can be leveraged by all ACORD Standards users to advance performance, reduce costs, or increase project completion speed.

Awarded to:

Mutual & Federal
Santam
Stride

ACORD Industry Recognition/Leadership – Individual

Awarded to:

Elmarie Joone (Santam)
Trevor Lestrange (Mutual & Federal)
Jenny Theunissen (Stride)
Pierre van Heerden (Mutual & Federal)

ACORD Streamline Award (Business Process Improvement Award)

This award recognises organisations whose usage of ACORD Standards has demonstrably improved the business processes used within the organisation or externally throughout the industry.

Awarded to:

Hollard
Mutual & Federal

ACORD Action Award (Early Standards Adoption and/or New Adoption)
The ACORD Action Award is given to organisations that have newly implemented a new or existing ACORD Standard. The award recognizes their technological leadership and community spirit by leading the way in making the industry more productive and efficient through the use of standards.

Awarded to:

Mutual & Federal

The ACORD Standard is an integral part of the STRIDE solution and we would like to extend our congratulations to all the winners. All of these companies and individuals have invested a lot of time and effort in the successful implementation of the Standard.

“Although the awards focused on the insurer and industry achievements, one should not forget the hard work, dedication and commitment from everyone in the industry,” says Deon Olckers, STRIDE CEO. “A task of this magnitude would have been impossible if it was not for the leadership within the industry who had the vision to develop a single data standard. There was also a lot of dedicated effort from the South African ACORD working group and Steerco that spent endless hours developing an acceptable industry standard. We need to thank the various information technology investments and efforts from insurers, binder holders and third party system providers who assisted to take the South African short term insurance industry to the next stage of development. Lastly I need to thank the two STRIDE partners being ACORD and Astute who shared our vision and assisted us through the last number of years establish a solution that will benefit the industry and more importantly its policyholders in the years to come.”

Good luck with the final push to year end, with all we accomplished in 2014 just imagine what is possible for 2015...