Integrating ACORD Standards with Legacy Systems
The Problem: Stuck In The Past
A lot of insurers use “legacy systems” in their IT, meaning old systems that don’t use the most up-to-date technology, but are maintained because the data they store is still needed and it can be easier to keep working with an old system than to attempt to populate a lot of old data into a new one. Updates are built on top of the existing system, instead of starting from scratch with new technology — like adding a modern wing to an old Victorian-style house.
Of course, sometimes compatibility becomes an issue between these legacy systems and newer innovations. Our client needed to develop a search portal for their database that was compliant with ACORD, an industry-wide set of technology standards for insurance carriers. But their existing legacy system was so old that it had actually been designed in COBOL, and the interface was simply incompatible with the newer standards.
The Analysis: Making Opposites Attract
We had to find a way to bring these two different systems, designed in different decades with completely different philosophies, into harmony. These standards-based upgrades are more challenging than the classic upgrade, because in addition to working with what is already there, you have to incorporate particular technologies and features whether or not they seem intuitively compatible. Times like these are when service-oriented architecture is especially necessary for the insurance industry, since no packaged product could really incorporate the various system eccentricities that need to be taken into consideration.
The challenge is to create an architecture that can contain both the legacy system and the standards-based system, and build it around both of them to make sure that processes flow between them in a logical way.
The Solution: Coming In Through The Window
We abstracted our client’s legacy system, preserving its history and functionality while “wrapping” it in an ACORD-compliant interface. In order to bridge the gap between systems, we took advantage of ACORD’s XML standard to design an architecture that would allow us to integrate multiple windows. This design engaged both the old system and the new one and helped them to communicate with one another. Now, the new search portal could be used to search the very old archives.
Now the system can integrate with any system that was built to ACORD standards, meaning that when choosing an underwriting system to work with, underwriters aren’t limited to those that can engage with the old COBOL database. This opens doors for the company to continue to modernize, without ever having to completely do away with the old system and risk losing crucial data.