ACORD Launches “GRLC Generation 2.0” Data Standards to Support Digitalization Throughout Global (Re)Insurance Industry

New York, NY (Apr. 10, 2025) – ACORD, the standards-setting body for the global insurance industry, is pleased to announce the launch of the next generation of the ACORD Global Reinsurance & Large Commercial (GRLC) Standards. “GRLC Generation 2.0” represents an updated, global, digital-first approach to data messaging, enabling straight-through, end-to-end processing across the policy lifecycle and the (re)insurance ecosystem.

ACORD GRLC Gen 2 Standards will allow insurers, brokers, and service providers to leverage a unified set of digital data standards from placing to binding to claims to settlement. This will not only increase efficiency, interoperability, and data quality, but also support the adoption and implementation of emerging digital-first systems both internally, and across trading partners.

“As the global industry faces an unprecedented rate of change, our members have expressed an even greater demand for digitalization and interoperability. We are witnessing some incredible success stories of members digitizing their enterprises and trading partnerships, and enjoying material efficiency gains over their non-digital peers,” said Chris Newman, President International, ACORD. “There is a golden opportunity to extend the benefits of standardized data exchange across all stakeholders and throughout the insurance lifecycle.”

ACORD GRLC Standards have been widely used by the global (re)insurance and specialty markets for years to enable efficient and effective flow of insurance data. GRLC Generation 2.0 has updated and aligned the development of these standards with several market modernization initiatives, including:

• ACORD Next-Generation Digital Standards, a lightweight, technology-agnostic, JSON-based set of standards optimized for fine-grained transactions such as microservices and APIs;
• Lloyd’s Blueprint Two and Core Data Record (CDR), for which ACORD Standards were selected as the market’s chosen data standards methodology; and
• Peer-to-peer implementation of ACORD GRLC Standards by users such as the Ruschlikon community, which has reported up to 70% reduction in unallocated cash, 80% improvement in data quality, and 60% reduction in manual effort to process transactions.

ACORD GRLC Gen 2 Standards feature enhanced navigation and accessibility, with robust application and architecture for placing, claims, and accounting digital messaging. They provide a range of business and technical assets to fully support implementers in their digital journey, with each asset tailored to the specific needs of the business or technical audience.

The first assets released under the ACORD GRLC Gen 2 Standards are:

• A new Unified Placing Standard and updated ePlacing Implementation Guide, unifying the Blueprint Two and peer-to-peer workstreams to create a single standardized approach to digital placing that can be easily adopted by insurers, reinsurers, brokers, and placing platforms.
• A whitepaper on Enabling the Future of Claims Digital Messaging, outlining the development of new Claims Handling & Orchestration Standards to complement existing Claim Movement Standards and enable straight-through digital claims processing for both insurers and reinsurers.

Upcoming releases will include next-generation updates of the ACORD EBOT (accounting & settlement), ECOT (claim movement), and CRP (contract, risk & pre-accounting) Standards, featuring both XML- and JSON-based implementations.

“This new era of the GRLC Standards will transform how organizations communicate and transact business within global (re)insurance markets,” Newman added. “We are excited to share the GRLC Generation 2.0 vision of enabling truly digital, end-to-end data exchange across our community.”

About ACORD

ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) is the global standards-setting body for the insurance industry. ACORD facilitates fast, accurate data exchange and efficient workflows through the development of electronic standards, standardized forms, and tools to support their use. ACORD currently engages more than 36,000 participating organizations spanning over 100 countries, including insurance and reinsurance companies, agents and brokers, software providers, financial services organizations, and industry associations. ACORD maintains offices in New York and London. Learn more at www.acord.org.

Source: ACORD

Tags: ACORD, carriers, claims, Communications, data, data standard, digitization, launch, reinsurance, whitepaper