What Do We Offer?

Working to Give You the Advantage

The Centre for Study of Insurance Operations (CSIO) was founded in 1981 as an association of Property and Casualty insurance companies and their distributing brokerages. Brokers are members of CSIO through the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada (IBAC). CSIO provides services nationally in both official languages and has offices in Toronto and Montréal.

CSIO's central mandate is to support industry standards enabling a competitive advantage for the Independent Broker Distribution Channel. The activities resulting from this mandate are diverse and are expanding as technological opportunities broaden.

At the outset, CSIO's programs revolved around the creation and maintenance of industry standard forms, which are now available in paper and computer format. From forms, work quickly moved into electronic data interchange standards or EDI, for both Personal and Commercial Lines.

With the advent of new technologies like the Internet and e-business, CSIO began to establish industry standard web transaction screens and has since moved into XML standards.

As the power and the use of the Internet grows, CSIO will be looking very aggressively at how the industry can further benefit from those new tools. The potential benefit that we see in these technologies today is probably understated. CSIO is actively pursuing these benefits for the industry in a timely manner. In this way, CSIO's leadership is helping the entire industry improve its competitive advantage.

What Do We Offer?

EDI Standards
CSIO’s Personal Lines EDI (Electronic Data Interface) Standards are exceptionally stable and widely used across Canada. The development of Commercial Lines Standards is continuing beyond the existing lines of Property, General Liability, Tenant’s Legal Liability and Crime. The next line of business to be developed is a Farm (Personal & Commercial) Standards. Maintenance requests to the Standards are reviewed and passed by CSIO members at regularly scheduled meetings.

Forms Standards
CSIO Forms have gone electronic! They have been converted to Portable Document Format (PDF format) and to Printer Control Language (PCL5). PDF forms can be displayed on Windows based PCs while the PCL format is commonly used by computer systems to generate forms on laser printers. We have recently revised many of our existing forms including the Certificate of Insurance, Payment Authorization Form and Cancellation/Reinstatement Forms. New Commercial Liability and Property forms are also in progress.

Web Screens Standards
The need to standardize web based transaction screens became apparent with the advent of company web enabled screens. CSIO therefore began working with insurance companies and their brokers to develop standard web screens (Personal Lines). To date we have completed the general screen design and layout guidelines, Billing Inquiry, Claims Status Inquiry and First Notice of Loss - Auto and Property. The next transaction to be developed will be Policy Change, followed by New Business.

XML Standards
CSIO XML standards will provide a common data transfer interface, connecting disparate systems in real time and giving Brokers and Companies the tools to develop and implement a new distribution model for increased efficiency and customer service. This initiative is being pursued in a manner that will facilitate XML data exchange in the global marketplace.

Terminology Standards
CSIO has now created a Terminology Standards for our Members (including English to French Glossary).