ACORD Standards based SOA solution for Insurance industry combine ACORD eForms with business services through XForms standard

Abstract

In many industries there's a move from paper forms towards electronic forms (eForms) - speed and direction varies within and between industries. Within Insurance, ACORD Forms is such a standardized effort for Properties & Casualty and Life & Annuity. However, ACORD has not effectively linked their forms to the data models they've produced, ACORD forms are still used as static forms - this inhibits the move to SOA and effective straight through processing. This article will introduce how to leverage XForms W3C standardized technique into ACORD Forms and combine it with ACORD Message model in a SOA solution. It illustrates the necessary steps needed for initiating an end to end service invocation through a secure electronic forms channel, and how to utilize a feasible mechanism to makes the forms dynamic, thus the form content change with backend business rules adjustment automatically. © 2008 IEEE.