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Insurers Can Use Metadata Standards For Internal Data

Ed McKinley March 2007

The metadata standards that streamline company-to-company communication can do double duty as prototypes for internal data management within a single insurance carrier.

"If it has already been invented in the industry, why should we think that we're going to be able to invent our own that's better?" reasons Rich Maynard, an enterprise architect for The Hartford Financial Services Group, Hartford, Conn. He's one of many insurance executives who view industry metadata standards that way.

Metadata, or "data about data," works something like a dictionary that defines data or like the index in a book that tells users where to find data, says Gary Knoble, who worked for The Hartford for 30 years before leaving a year ago in January to work as a consultant for Bao Rong in China. He's been a founder and active member of data-oriented trade groups, and he agrees that metadata standards designed for external use can serve as examples for handling data within a company.

"If I were the CIO, I'd say start with ACORD," Knoble says, referring to a widely used set of industry standards. "If they don't satisfy a need, then modify them." Observers agree that data and business processes vary so much among insurers that standards nearly always need some tweaking to work internally.

In a pilot project, ACORD standards fit 90% of the data at Erie Indemnity Co., Erie, Pa., says Jim Viveralli, a database administrator there. "The rest of them, we had to make up because they're Erie-specific," he says. His service on ACORD's Business Dictionary Validation Working Group helps him keep him in touch with others who are working with metadata, he notes.

That sort of contact can help carriers navigate the metadata scene but can't replace the need for familiarity with company metadata, says Mike Freel, a bureau statistics manager for EMC Insurance Group Inc., Des Moines, Iowa.

"We remain cognizant of all of these industry standards, yet we make sure that if the need arises for us to have our own internal standard because of specific business practices then we would do that [internally]," says Freel.

Juggling external standards and internal needs can prove challenging because most carriers face a "mishmash" of half-forgotten homegrown legacy metadata standards, says Knoble. Departments within a single company often use different names for the same pieces of data or use differing rules for processing the same data. Data from outside the company hasn't been subject to company rules.

"You may be using data that's in a six-digit field in one place and in a 10-digit field in another," Knoble says by way of example. "In one instance it has a decimal point-in another it does not. Dates may be in different formats." Drivers might be listed by age in one place and by date of birth in another.

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