Press Room
Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | April 23, 2002
CONTACT: Deborah Tucker, (703) 707-8830 ext. 15 or dtucker@navanet.org

XML-Standard for Annuity Industry Complete Product Profile for Annuities

Reston, VA, April 23, 2002 - NAVA, the leading trade association for the variable annuity industry, announced today that the Product Profile for Annuities (PPfA) is now complete and will be forwarded to ACORD for inclusion in the ACORD XMLife Standard. An update of the XML standard and the NAVA Implementation Guide for the PPfA will be on the NAVA (www.navanet.org) and ACORD (www.acord.org) websites May 1.

Late last year, NAVA entered into an agreement with the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), the leading standards organization for the insurance industry, to work together to develop XML-based standards for the annuity industry. The partnership has NAVA coordinating and developing requirements and priorities for annuity standards through the efforts of its Technology Committee. This Committee then makes the information available to ACORD for inclusion in their standards setting processes. ACORD ensures that these standards are open standards in the public domain and available to anyone free of charge no matter what their affiliation with ACORD or NAVA.

"It is hard to overstate the importance of this event," noted Mark Mackey, President and CEO of NAVA. "The acceptance and adoption of these ACORD/NAVA standards will over time have a tremendous impact on our industry. We now have over 100 participating members on our Technology Committee - comprised of insurers, brokers/dealers, asset managers, and service providers. A working group of more than 30 companies have been meeting and conferring on development of the PPfA over the past six months, developing a standard that will allow for the transmittal of complete product information of all types of annuities - ranging from deferred variable to fixed immediate annuities."

NAVA is a non-profit trade association located in suburban Washington D.C. The association provides a variety of services to the industry including educational forums, research, conferences, and lobbying activities aimed at furthering the development of fixed and variable annuities, income annuities and variable life insurance. Founded in 1991, NAVA has a broad-based constituency, with over 350 members representing over 98 percent of the industry. Additional information is available at www.navanet.org. NAVA also maintains and supports an educational website for consumers at www.RetireOnYourTerms.com