New Members Join ACORD Life Committee

Each committee is responsible for overseeing the development and improvement of standards that pertain to a particular specialty.

The Life Committee is chaired by Anne Garlick of Commonwealth Bank. Rick Wingfield of AIA Australia serves as Vice Chair. The new members are Akhilesh Vishwakarma of Asteron, Jimmy Tong of Metropolitan Life, Sid Sanyal of Zurich Financial Australia and Kerry Fullagar of Allianz Australia. They join Steve Tuften of Allianz Deutschland AG on the committee.

Vishwakarma brings 17 years of information technology experience and nine years in financial services to the committee. Before joining Asteron, he held positions at QBE Insurance, Westpac and Allianz Australia.

Sanyal holds the position of Enterprise Architect in the Life Risk and Investments department at Zurich. He recently spoke at the FST Media Conference in Sydney, advocating for the leveraging of technology to bring clients and agents closer together in a virtual environment.

Tong has held the post of Senior Business Analyst at MetLife since April 2008. He had previously worked at IBM Super Life and Certe Group.

Fullagar serves as Head of Architecture and Program Delivery for Allianz. She recently led an Allianz team charged with implementing a new claims-processing platform, a project that was the subject of her address at the FST Media Conference at which Sanyal spoke.

The Life Committee was formed in 2011 in order to investigate the implementation of life insurance standards on a common basis. Alan Stitzer, ACORD’s Manager, was recently quoted as saying that the committee’s first task would be an analysis of group life standards, with an eye toward examining underwriting in the context of the relationship between insurers and superannuation funds. "This will look at the coverage of an insurance arrangement between the two parties in a group policy," Stitzer is reported to have said.

The intermediary adviser market and the direct sales channel are also on the committee’s agenda.

In addition to the Life Committee, ACORD has established steering committees for general insurance, common services, life and annuity, property and casualty, reinsurance and workers’ compensation.