CSIO’s Commercial Lines Working Group Finalizes Questions for Quoting Small Retail Business

(Toronto – June 25, 2020) – CSIO is pleased to announce that its Commercial Lines (CL) Working Group has finalized a standard set of questions required for underwriting small retail business submissions. Standardizing the questions helps support workflow efficiencies between brokers and insurers by improving the speed of information exchange, and strengthens the value proposition of the broker channel.

The finalized questions further support real-time quoting for nearly 90% of the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s (IBC) retail industry codes. This includes retail services such as florists, bakeries, drug stores, hardware stores, and electronics shops. The questions for retail, and small contractors which was completed in November 2019, are built using the foundational minimum data set that consists of common data elements used by insurers to underwrite commercial risks.

These finalized questions are critical for insurers to determine the appropriate industry group classification required to quote a risk. Once programmed in the broker management system (BMS), brokers can approach multiple markets using the same information. This results in more accurate quotes provided in real-time and while also reducing double work, less paperwork, and improves customer service.

“In an increasingly competitive marketplace, these technology advancements using data standards allow us to provide greater value to the brokers and better service to their customers,” says Chris Farris, Director, Business Development of Brokercore Inc. “Using this structured standard data set is the most effective way for the industry to implement and program real time quoting. We have demonstrated how this works with the contractors’ industry segment and we are excited to build the functionality for retail risks.”

This milestone was achieved with the efforts and collaboration of the CL Working Group which includes representation from insurers, brokers and service providers. Using the CSIO XML data standards for commercial lines, the working group’s goal is to build the path to advance the implementation of Commercial Lines Data Standards in the broker channel.

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About Centre for Study of Insurance Operations (CSIO)
CSIO is Canada’s industry technology association of property and casualty insurers, service providers and over 38,000 brokers. CSIO is committed to improving the consumer’s ease of doing business within the broker channel by overseeing the development, implementation and maintenance of technology standards and solutions such as eDocs, My Proof of Insurance eDelivery, and eSignatures. In addition, CSIO operates CSIOnet, a secure, industry-owned platform for the efficient exchange of policy information for the broker channel. The CSIO XML Standard is licensed to CSIO by ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development).

For further information, please contact:

Sarina Visram, MBA, CIP | Director, Member Relations & Communications
110 Yonge Street, Suite 500 | Toronto, ON M5C 1T4
(416) 360-1773 x 2300 | 1 (800) 463-2746 x 2300
svisram@csio.com | www.csio.com