In addition to identifying Fund Transfers as an industry priority, the advocacy paper issued by SIA last year named three other areas deserving immediate industry attention. A brief description of each initiative and its status follows:

ACATS/IPS
Following successful completion of pilot testing, ACATS/IPS was officially launched by DTCC in August 2005. ACATS/IPS facilitates annuity account transfers between broker/dealers, agent changes within a broker/dealer, and transactions such as broker identification number changes.

Targeted to insurance carriers, broker/dealers and banks, ACATS/IPS leverages the technology of ACATS, a DTCC service that for 20 years has automated and standardized the transfer of financial assets in brokerage accounts between financial services firms. With 14 carriers and distributors already using ACATS/IPS, DTCC is anticipating substantial adoption in 2006 due to marketplace needs.

Replacements Processing
Driven by the industry’s need to develop an automated solution for the transfer of annuity and life insurance assets from one insurance carrier to another, DTCC is developing a Replacements Processing service based on ACORD XML standard messaging. The new service, which will include money settlement, document attachments, and a pending-case status solution for distributors, will help carriers eliminate many of the manual tasks involved in processing these types of transactions and ultimately reduce operating costs. Replacements Processing is expected to enter production in early 2007, subject to regulatory approval.

Data Conformity for Product Fund Identifiers
Initiated by NAVA in August 2004, this project seeks to document and facilitate standard usage for annuity fund identifiers, product CUSIPs, and service features within automated insurance communications. Phase 1 of this effort defined industry standard usage for product fund identifiers, recommendations for which have been published by NAVA as a white paper on its web site at www.navanet.org.

Phase 1 called for rapid adoption of the proposed standards as a way to resolve inconsistencies surrounding annuity fund identification. In support of this, DTCC and ACORD recently enhanced their standard messaging solutions, with several distributors and carriers already utilizing and benefiting from the upgrade.

The NAVA work group recently completed Phase 2 recommendations for product CUSIPs and is now addressing industry direction for service feature standardization.