ACORD Awards

To recognize industry leaders in implementing ACORD standards, ACORD presented awards to carriers, vendors, and individuals at the 14th Annual ACORD Awards at the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum in Las Vegas.

"The ACORD Award recognizes and highlights the value of the efforts, leaders, services that have demonstrated excellence in leading the industry transformation," said Denise Garth, vice president of ACORD membership and standards to the 250 attendees of the ceremony. "Standards are a critical component of IT strategy to push competition."

Since 1997, ACORD has been presenting the awards to companies that have embraced industry standards to improve data communications, enhance workflow and promote cost efficiency. At this year's ceremony 40 companies were recognized for upholding the commitment to industry standards.

This year's big winner, Applied Systems (University Park, Ill.) swept away the competition with nine awards for industry leadership for improved commercial download; business integration enabler-external; Web services, SOA; AL3/ XML Data Transformation; Industry Leadership for Straight Through Processing; Shared Service Provider; Outsourcer, Download Vendor of the Year, Total Implementations and Upload, Vendor of the Year, Total Implementations.

"We rely on hundreds of people, like you... to put ACORD's standards into action," said Barbara Koster senior vice president and CIO at Prudential Financial (Newark, New Jersey; total assets of $417 billion) and ACORD Board Chair.

Top winners at the conference also included Genworth (Richmond, Va.; total assets of $105 billion) and The Hartford (Hartford, Conn.; total assets of $285.5 billion) with eight awards each. Genworth was recognized for having the Greatest Number of Transaction Implementations; Greatest Growth in Number of Trading Partners; Greatest Number of Direct Trading Partners; Business Internal Integration Improvement; Business Value External Integration Improvement; Business Value External Integration; Greatest Impact- Greatest Dollar Volume of Premium; Business Integration Enabler- Internal and Business Integration Enabler- External. While The Hartford received awards for the Greatest Growth in Number of Trading Partners; Greatest Growth in Number of Implementations; Greatest Number of Direct Trading Partners; Greatest Dollar Volume of Premium; Business Integration Enabler- Internal, Business Integration Enabler- External; Web Services/ SOA and AL3/ XML Data Transformation.

This year ACORD also recognized the achievements of three individuals from each of its standards domains that have dedicated time to helping implement ACORD standards with a Distinguished Service Award. Recipients included Mele Fuller of Safeco ( Seattle, Wash; total assets of 6.3 billion), Property & Casualty/ Surety Domain; Clark Vavrinec of New York Life's Life and Annuity Domain and Maggy Leon of Guy Carpenter's (New York; $160 billion in consolidated assets1)Reinsurance and Large Commercial Domain. "I'm honored and surprised. I've been working in the industry for over 20 years," said Mele Fuller of Safeco. "I started working for a vendor who was a firm believer in standards and I carried those values with me throughout my career."

The full list of winners can be accessed at https://www.acord.org.