NU Online News Service, Aug. 12, 10:30 a.m.EDT

AIR Worldwide Corporation announced today that it is the firstfirm whose catastrophe modeling software will meet the requirementsof industry standards group ACORD.

Boston-based AIR said the software will support the new bindingauthority exposure data standard (ER3001) of ACORD (Association forCooperative Operations Research and Development).

AIR noted that the goal of ACORD, a global, nonprofit standardsdevelopment organization serving the insurance and relatedfinancial services industries, is to facilitate the development ofopen data standards and standard forms.

The announcement included a statement from Paul Nunn, head ofExposure Management, Lloyd's Franchise, saying, "AIR Worldwide hasbeen supportive of the ACORD initiative to standardize locationlevel exposure data from the very outset. I'm delighted to see thisimplementation of the standard into their software and see this asa key tipping point for wider industry adoption."

Binding authority agreements give firms known as coverholders,usually managing general agents, the authority to write business onbehalf of Lloyd's syndicates.

Lloyd's said it "strongly supports and encourages U.S. propertyunderwriters and brokers to use the ACORD standard propertyreporting template when reporting information regarding the risksthat have been bound. By standardizing the reporting format, itwill help remove the need to spend time and money cleansing andreformatting information."

Roy Laker, vice president, ACORD London office, said, "ACORDstandards make it easier for coverholders to keep Lloyd'sunderwriters up to date with details of the risks they havewritten. We commend AIR for their support of this data format as itserves as a common communication method for use by multipleparties, thereby increasing the efficiency of the entireindustry."

AIR said that exposure data in the ACORD format can be importedin version 11.0 of AIR's CLASIC/2(TM) and CATStation catastrophemodeling applications using AIR ImportExpress.

AIR ImportExpress is a utility that provides an intuitive,user-friendly interface and allows users to create and reusetemplates for automatic conversion of future imports. A templatefor the ACORD binding authority exposure data standard is nowincluded in AIR ImportExpress, the company explained.

"AIR continues to be a strong proponent of open data formats toenable the smooth transfer of catastrophe exposure data for riskanalysis," said Ming Lee, AIR president and chief executiveofficer.

Mr. Lee said AIR will be continuing its cooperation with ACORD"to drive this emerging data standard and further promote its useindustrywide."

As new catastrophe exposure data formats are adopted by ACORD,AIR said it will incorporate them in future releases of itscatastrophe modeling systems.