Firms Work To Establish FS 9000 Standards

In order to more quickly establish standardization within financial services without reliance upon government regulation, members of the FS 9000 Association are proposing to integrate financial-services requirements into the newly revised International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards. The new standards proposed by the FS 9000 Association, a group of financial services firms, include metrics for privacy, security and risk in the financial services industry.

The existing ISO 9001:1994 standards, a set of quality-related manufacturing-focused standards adopted across industries, were revised in December of 2000. "ISO 9001:2000 is a revision of the old standards and is now more process-based and customer focused and includes planning and metrics," according to Brian Hettrick, senior manager, financial services, of FS 9000 association supporter KPMG (New York). "The ISO 9001:2000 standards, which we plan to base the FS 9000 standards on, are much more applicable to the services industry."

Although many insurers are becoming registered in ISO 9001:2000 for their loss control and disaster recovery planning areas, says Hettrick, there are insurance-specific benefits with the proposed FS 9000, in the areas of claims processing and e-commerce. "Money that may have been spent on customizing new claims brought from other companies can be saved through standardization," he says. "In addition to helping with privacy from an e-sign standpoint, FS 9000 will impact global e-commerce. As variation is reduced so to is cost."

According to Hettrick, metrics will be submitted by FS 9000 members to an independent third party which will, through a double-blind system, compile the numbers and, in a way that ensures privacy, release the metrics so the industry can benchmark against them. Proponents of the proposed standards also hope to develop an integrated systematic audit to add efficiency.