Property and Casualty (P&C) carriers need to be more agile in their operations, processes and decision making in order to sustain a growth-oriented enterprise and successfully compete in a networked world – by and large, this is not the case today. Challenges that carriers face in a 24×7 globally dispersed world range from regulatory changes, profitable growth, and everything in between. These challenges demand an accurate understanding of the enterprise assets (e.g., People, Process, and Technology) and the inter-dependencies among these assets. Business stakeholders want the products and services to be delivered better, cheaper and faster in the midst of the inherent challenges of dealing with legacy systems. Furthermore, the Internet drives the need to define more loosely coupled, interoperable business processes and associated software components executable in distributed and heterogeneous environments.

In order to support the much needed agility, business functions and associated processes must be supported by semantically accurate and reusable Information (data and its associated metadata). Information modeled and/or mapped to domain specific standards further enhances its value and interoperability. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is often touted as the solution that will enable agility, coupled with XML based domain standards used in exchanging information internally and externally. However, the domain specific XML standards often cater to an inter-enterprise exchange of data and offer very little, if any, semantic richness and traceability to production databases and applications.

To develop Standard “Reference Model” in the form of Information Models for the P&C insurance industry. Ultimately these Models and their supporting artifacts can be reused and/or extended to other related domains like Life and Reinsurance. P&C carriers would utilize the information models towards development of P&C business services to better understand and automate their business processes and functions with the objective of continuous improvement and creating a more agile business environment.

Organizations that develop their own XML Schemas using Schema editors risk having the XML tags not in sync with the core business concepts. By developing an XML Schema model using the MDA approach preserves semantic accuracy and consistency; but, also preserves critical data modeling features (e.g., Primary/Foreign keys, relationships into ID and IDRefs in the XML Schema). Maintenance of XML Schemas generated from these models is easier, less time consuming, and less costly.

The stated required deliverables for the WG are:

1. Glossary of P&C Business Terms and accompanying metadata (source, version, format as well as Party, Party Role, Address for example)
2. Conceptual Data Model representing P&C business concepts with a target audience of business Subject Matter Experts, data modelers and business analysts for example.
3. Attributed Logical (ER) Data Model with appropriate identifiers, logical data types and relationships as appropriate.
4. Traceability of P&C Business Terms to models (and model elements) listed above as well as valid semantic variations where applicable (synonyms, geographical variations etc.).
5. XMI representation of the above models. This is designed to facilitate the interchange of P&C metadata among data management tools. Submitters are encouraged to review and utilize work being done in OMG FDTF on UML to XMI conversion process.

The following deliverable are optional:

1. Relational database Model (a.k.a. Physical Data Model) derived from the Logical Data Model to support development and interoperability of transactional systems.
2. Dimensional Model (a.k.a. Star Schema that consists of ‘Fact’ Tables and ‘Dimensions’) derived from the Logical Data Model to support P&C Analytics (Data Warehouse/Data Mart, Business Intelligence Tools).
3. XML Schema Model to support P&C data exchange and development of Web Services.
4. P&C domain vocabulary and ontology to support vocabulary reuse across models, reasoning (model consistency checking, validation, and so forth), use in business rule development, and utility for development of semantically enriched Web Services.

The P&C Data Model Working Group (WG) is focused mainly on the regulated USA Property and Casualty insurance industry for both Personal and Commercial lines. The ceded reinsurance view is included; but, the reinsurer view is not. The WG is focused on the data and models needed to support New Business, Policy Administration, and Claims.

P&C Standard- Approach - The OMG P&C WG has embarked upon applying the proven Model Driven Architecture approach to development of a set of P&C Information Models traceable from an accepted set of business-driven concepts (e.g., Claims, Policy). We recognize that there are several providers and consumers of such business concepts in an insurance enterprise. Therefore, the proposed P&C Information Models must accommodate the need to represent the same business concept visually and otherwise via a set of Models targeted for a variety of providers and consumers. The Request for Proposal solicits input for ‘Information Models’ to address the data management needs of the P&C Insurance Community.

The WG intends to leverage and collaborate with the following:

• Intellectual property and artifacts donated by participating carriers, consulting firms, and technology vendors.
• OMG’s standards that support Information modeling (e.g., Common Warehouse Metamodel, CWM/Information Management Metamodel, Ontology Definition Metamodel, Semantics of Business Vocabulary, and Rules-SBVR).

• OMG; Finance Domain Task Force

• Open Source Community and ACORD.

• Develop models of P&C Business ‘Services’ and ‘Business Events’ in collaboration with OMG SOA Special Interest Group (SIG).

Follow P&C Submission Work to access the Submitters ONLY area.

If you are a Submitter and need access, please contact Tom Ford at tom.ford@liquidhub.com or Joe Harth at joe@omg.org

Bill Jenkins, CIO, Penn National Insurance, bjenkins@pnat.com

Tom Ford tom.ford@liquidhub.com

Ken Berk, Vice President of Business Development, Object Management Group, kenberk@omg.org

For Wiki features related questions, please contact Joe Harth at joe@omg.org

ACORD, http://www.acord.org (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