New RMS Tool Automates Preparation for Exposure Data in Standard ACORD Format

May 17, 2004

Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a provider of products and services for the management of catastrophe risk, has released a new data formatting tool called the RMS Data Wizard.

The tool is designed to help clean up and convert data about insured locations into a common format for use by insurance buyers, agents, brokers, insurers, and reinsurers. The Data Wizard automates the process of preparing account information according to the ACORD Open Market Standard, which was published in 2003 following a collaborative exercise among ACORD’s global members. The standard provides a single format for the reporting of location exposure information throughout the worldwide insurance and reinsurance information chain.

RMS is distributing the Data Wizard at no charge through its Web site at http://www.rms.com/datawizard. The tool functions as an add-in to Microsoft Excel, guiding users through the process of making location schedules ready for
import into systems that use the ACORD format, including the RiskLink and RiskBrowser catastrophe modeling platforms that are used in insurance markets. The Data Wizard includes side-by-side help to assist users, and is distributed with a user guide, tutorial, and sample location schedule.

“The RMS Data Wizard will further facilitate adoption of the ACORD Open Market Exposure Reporting Standard,” said Phil Brown, U.K./European standards manager of ACORD. “RMS providing this free of charge is a welcome contribution to the insurance market.”

The RMS(R) Data Wizard reportedly helps users to:

— Get location schedules into standard ACORD or RMS formats in order to secure an insurance quote more quickly on cat-exposed risks, in particular for property and workers compensation exposures.

— Save risk managers and their brokers time and effort in preparing
location schedules, and facilitate a common understanding of the key
location data elements such as street address, occupancy type, construction type, number of stories, and year of construction.

— Automatically clean up items such as inconsistent currencies, extra subtotals, page breaks, extra characters, and other common data formatting problems.

— Intelligently recognize addresses defined in a wide variety of formats and allow you to efficiently parse them into their discrete components.

— Convert descriptions of construction and occupancy types to the
appropriate codes, based on classification schemes used by insurance underwriters and catastrophe models.

“We hope that the RMS Data Wizard will be used not only by insurance companies, but by brokers and risk managers as well,” said Paul Nunn, catastrophe risk manager with ACE. “The submission of consistent and accurate location schedules is critical to technical rating and portfolio optimization, and use of the Data Wizard will assist in this process.”

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