Mike Walker's Blog

Insurance Messaging Framework Available

Last year I mentioned we had an Insurance Messaging Framework that focused specifically on the integration issues in insurance. Well we finally have released the bits to the public on CodePlex. In this early release of the reference framework it that allows you to dynamically create ACORD based messages to integrate into your .Net projects.

A big thank you goes out to Colin Cole from our US based insurance group who had created this framework. Colin will be showing this off at the Financial Services Developer Conference next week in NYC.

The framework provides a unique architectural approach to accomplishing this business need by abstracting the complexity. While this approach is appealing and have been attempted, they usually fails because people don’t know where to start, due the size of it’s scope, mistake prone and mistakes are expensive, usually involves a lot of foundational work that are not directly related to meeting the business needs (e.g.: using ACORD to design systems), etc. The uniqueness of our approach is we enable jump starting and organic evolution towards alignment by providing a rich set of assets/artifacts that align with industry models (e.g.: alignment to Motion insurance model) and semantic definitions (ACORD standards). We can abstract the many different policy administration system into a set of service that we can consistently use for business process composition.

Below is just a fraction of what is delivered in the framework:

 

To sweeten the pot, we have even included SDK-like help files that will allow you to navigate the framework with ease.

 

For more details look on the CodePlex and MSDN Architecture Center sites.

• http://www.codeplex.com/imf 
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/FinServArch

New Insurance Solutions Framework

There is a bit of movement here at Microsoft in the Financial Services space. In the insurance industry we just released the Insurance Value Chain.  Before that launch I was working on interoperability scenarios with the ACORD standard and what that looks like in the WS-* world.

Now I'm happy to let you know we have more solutions for insurance companies out there. Based on the OBA RAP for Loan Origination concepts we have developed a set of solutions for the New Business Origination processes. The banking loan origination processes are very similar to the insurance new business processes, from an architecture perspective it makes sense to address this space with a similar architecture.

As shown above the Insurance Solution Framework (ISF) is built in a similar fashion as the OR-LOS solution providing the entire architecture picture. This architecture also fits in nicely with the Insurance Value Chain if you would like to plug in Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) applications within the architecture.

The ISF supports the following Lines of Business (LOB):

• Life and Annuities
• Property and Casualty
• Life Care

The ISF abstracts the complexity of the underlying/backend systems, the unique OBA architectural approach and the framework enable businesses, overtime, to move from an application centric paradigm to a business process centric paradigm. Because the services, activities and process templates are built on ACORD a wide/broad range of backend systems can be surrounded/encapsulated to simplify the “topology” of applications. In cases where there are gaps in/between backend systems, the framework also provides a good design for building full-featured service.

This approach provides a viable alternative to rip-and-replace strategy typically required (due to additional capabilities required in backend systems like BAM, workflow, etc) to move to a business process centric paradigm. It leverages existing systems thus greatly reducing the risk associated core system replacement.

Not only is the architecture fully defined but it is also well documented. Implemented in a similar style as many of our SDK's ISF provides an enormous amount of definition around the architecture as well.

As all of you know the insurance business process is extremely complex and varies depending on which insurance carrier your at. The ISF is more of a solution accelerator or a reference architecture rather than a line of business solution. Keep that in mind we you investigate these solutions.

If you would like more information on the Insurance Solutions Framework contact Microsoft Consulting Services. I will work with MCS to possibly write some whitepapers that will give you more guidance into our thoughts in the insurance space.

ACORD Updates

Today is the last day of the four day ACORD submit in sunny Ft. Lauderdale. On a personal note I am happy to be out of the rain! There was quite a bit covered this session. I think ACORD is starting to feel some outside pressure to deliver. From what I am told membership has stagnated. I will not cover the business or detailed specification changes that happened but some of the more exciting items with version 2.0 of the specification and some futures. Version 2.0 is now in the Candidate Recommendation Stage. This is a big step forward for the standard. But what I am really excited about is the Unified Messaging version of the standard. This version promises: A single library of business messages Support of the insurance value chain Geography neutral Support for the standards framework Support all domains and LOB's I am happy to say it looks like this standard is heading in the right direction. I was a bit worried after they went down the XML path. The last time I deployed an application using the ACORD schema it was cumbersome and to heavy. It just didn't perform much less scale. I think after some lessons learned they are back on track. Microsoft is helping were we can to aid in this effort!