CSIO, the Centre for Study of Insurance Operations, is the Canadian property and casualty

insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

industry's nonprofit association of insurers, brokers and software providers. Much of its work is in the development of data standards, especially

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

and EDI, for the transmission of insurance information throughout the Canadian P&C insurance industry. CSIO also promotes the adoption of various technologies within the industry, such as

telematics Telematics is an interdisciplinary field encompassing telecommunications, vehicular technologies ( road transport, road safety, etc.), electrical engineering (sensors, instrumentation, wireless communications, etc.), and computer science (multimedi ...

and

electronic signature An electronic signature, or e-signature, is data that is logically associated with other data and which is used by the signatory to sign the associated data. This type of signature has the same legal standing as a handwritten signature as long as i ...

, that promise to enhance efficiencies in the broker distribution channel. For example, as part of its XML standards, CSIO released a telematics data standard in January 2014 to facilitate the process of transferring driving data from an insurance customer's vehicle to an insurance company. CSIO worked together with the US insurance standards organization

ACORD The Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD) is a non-profit organization in the insurance industry. ACORD publishes and maintains an archive of standardized forms. ACORD has also developed a comprehensive library of ...

on the telematics initiative. Regarding the

initiative, in the summer of 2014, CSIO developed and published the eSignatures Vendor Dashboard, a resource for insurance brokers to help them research and choose an e-signature software solution. CSIO has campaigned for the adoption of

Transport Layer Security Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in securi ...

(TLS) among brokers and insurers in the Canadian property and casualty industry. In 2014, CSIO released its TLS Chart, showing that over 1,200 member brokerages across Canada use TLS. CSIO has promoted the concept of the

paperless office A paperless office (or paper-free office) is a work environment in which the use of paper is eliminated or greatly reduced. This is done by converting documents and other papers into digital form, a process known as digitization. Proponents claim t ...

to Canadian brokerages. It developed the eDocs data standard in order to help brokers and insurance companies transition away from the printing and mailing of paper documents. Various companies within the Canadian insurance industry support and have adopted the CSIO eDocs standard to make their workflows more paperless. CSIO works to strengthen market share for the

independent insurance agent Independent insurance agents, also known as insurance sales agents or "producers", typically sell a variety of insurance and financial products, including property insurance and casualty insurance, life insurance, health insurance, disability in ...

network in Canada. Its members comprise all the provincial broker associations in Canada, including the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario (IBAO).

History

CSIO got its start in 1981 as a not-for profit organization focused on building efficiencies in the Canadian property and casualty insurance market. Its initial focus was in standardizing the many proprietary forms and computer systems being used among brokers and insurance companies for their communications. In 1997, the organization built CSIOnet to transmit data between insurance industry trading partners such as brokers and insurers. This network still serves as the Canadian P&C insurance industry's primary network for the distribution of EDI insurance policy data. In 1999, CSIO initiated a project to create an online portal based on

SEMCI Single Entry Multiple Company Interface (SEMCI) is a computer system based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) that is used to submit the same information to multiple companies. SEMCI is use by insurance agents to insurance quotes from several ...

technology, enabling

single sign-on Single sign-on (SSO) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID to any of several related, yet independent, software systems. True single sign-on allows the user to log in once and access services without re-enterin ...

for brokers and real-time transactions between brokers and insurers. The portal project was ultimately abandoned in 2006, after the industry spent approximately $15 million on the development effort. In 2012, after brokers in the industry indicated a strong preference for standardized over proprietary technology solutions, CSIO released its

eDocs data standard to deliver workflow efficiencies for brokers. In June 2017, CSIO announced plans to develop an industry-wide solution to deliver electronic proof of auto insurance to consumers. The solution, called My Proof of Insurance, formally launched in February 2018, available to all members at no additional cost.

References

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External links

www.csio.com
1981 establishments in Canada Insurance organizations