The market has made moves towards this with agreed stages in the core business processes and documents, but this must now be more widely adopted as the market standard and considered best practice. The Exchange will act as a vehicle for enforcing message standards and driving use within the market.
ACORD and the Exchange
The Exchange uses agreed ACORD messaging standards to ensure a common framework and guidelines for all electronic communication within the London market.
The Exchange seeks to drive market standards and therefore will not accept non-ACORD messages. It will support the transfer of all messages to the agreed ACORD RLC and DRI standards being used.
Structured information sent electronically will be validated against the agreed versions of the ACORD standard. Users are notified where validation has failed ensuring the common use of the standard.
Ultimately, a single standard will be adopted and the market will move to the next version of a standard at the same time.
A smarter way of sharing information
Using ACORD standards a number of benefits can be achieved, including;
- Enhanced interoperability; systems able to talk to each other in the same language.
- ACORD messages can update back office systems and documents can be delivered directly to document repositories.
- ACORD is a global standard - data becomes international and portable.
Which ACORD version will be used?
The Exchange will support a single version of the ACORD standard from ensuring the whole market speak the same language.
Currently the Exchange enforces:
- The exchange of messages conforming to an agreed messaging protol - ACORD AMS, currently version 1.4
- The exchange of documents conforming to ACORD DRI, currently version 1.2
- The exchange of placing information conforming to the current ACORD RLC Standard, currently versions 2009.1 (Placing) and 2010.2 (EBOT/ECOT)
ACORD validation
The Exchange provides ACORD schema & RLC placing validation at its centre.
The Exchange will therefore validate the messages against the accepted versions of the ACORD standard and notify users where validation has failed. Users should also continue their own internal validation.
Three types of validation as laid out in the ACORD guidelines for placing are:
- Transport level (HTTPS)
- SOAP level (SOAP signed)
- Business level (Schema and ACORD RLC placing validator)
