2. Sectoral - Insurance (Coordinator Andreas Schultz)
Celebrating 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Belgium case – the « Telebib2 centre » - by Michel Bormans

3. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
11 Mio inhabitants
Dutch / French / German speaking communities (plus a Brussels English speaking expats community)
Insurance in Belgium:
Direct insurers / (indirect) insurers through brokers
Brokers manage to keep their share of the market

4. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
Evolution of the premium-income as per the most important distributionchannels
(in billions €)
Direct insurers
Bank-Insurers
Exclusive networks
(indirect) Insurers through Brokers

5. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
Assuralia – federation of Belgian insurers
VMVM-ACAM – federation of Belgian « midcap » insurers
Feprabel – federation of french-speaking brokers
FVF – federation of dutch-speaking brokers
UPCA-BVVM – federation of large brokers
CMS/GOC – Mixed Committee for follow-up (insurers & brokers)
GTN/WGN – Standardisation working group
(insurers & brokers & software vendors)

6. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
Actually the top 20 insurers cover 95%+ of the total brokers sales channel marketvolume
4000+ brokers resulting into some individual users of a diversity of systems, all implementing message-exchanges build upon our standards

7. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
(mid 1970’s) White-book : agreements on documents and processes
(end 1980’s) Assurnet/1 : agreement on information elements (Telebib1) and structures (positionnal) and exchanges (Belgacom – bilan network)
(end 1990’s) Assurnet/2 : renewed agreement on information elements and structures (Telebib2 – EDIFACT based) and exchanges (gradually leaving bilan network and entering an internet-based but enclosed environment
(mid 2000’s) sectoral Service Level Agreements

8. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
In /- 35 million messages are exchanged over the sectoral platform
Technical messages
Party descriptions
Broker’s current account statements
Technical messages
Claims assessments
Generic questions
Renewal notices = +/- invoices
Claims handling messages
New / amended business messages

9. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
The material as published on is a continuation of the things as set out by Luc Sterck.
It is easy to do nice things when sitting on the shoulders of some giant

10. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
Our SLA/3 is about implementation – our actors cannot implement in due time
too many messages are in outdated versions

11. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
Personal observations – less part of the presentation Please do note that my environment/activities focus on the (Belgian) national insurance market. In that sense it is not “global”.
Our exchanges are happening mainly in between insurance brokers and insurance companies.
To a lesser extent we have set up exchanges with other more or less directly insurance related parties (claim assessors / vehicle registration authority / other).
We have not (yet) set up exchanges with the end-client (e.g. the cross industry invoice).
Our exchanges allowed the broker community to set up sort of a client-open- extranet.
I do not see direct “links with the international supply chain”.
Indirectly, vehicle manufacturer’s data might be seen as being reused by insurers/brokers in the process of insuring/registering vehicle liability coverage.

12. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
Personal observations – less part of the presentation ... (continued) The Belgian implementation is sort of a local variant/dialect of UN/EDIFACT.
Our “Telebib2 centre” has for the last 11 years been staffed with one person (me), and I have been lucky to inherit such environment from Luc Sterck who has been active in EDIFACT matters since 1988 (The EDIFACt Board Finance Message Development Group Insurance Sub-Group MD4.A) and who retired in 2006.
“It is easy to do nice things when sitting on the shoulders of a giant” : that is the sentiment I have always had – the credits are not for me, but certainly for Luc. I only continued the road as laid out by him.

13. 30 years of UN/EDIFACT – Insurance - Belgium
Personal observations – less part of the presentation ... (continued – actually my main message for this audience) The one thing that strikes me is the observation that Luc led kind of a “double life”.
On the one side there were his Belgian local activities (be it heavily inspired by his more international activities) where things resulted into an UN/EDIFACT dialect being implemented.
And on the other side there were his UN/CEFACT activities where he contributed to the existence of a series of message definitions. The actual implementation of such defined messages is a distinct question to which I do not know the answer.
That same observation can be made for my own person; I too do lead such a “double life” and find it very difficult to actually/really “connect” what is going on within my local environment with what is going on in our more global/international environment.
One is “inspired by” the more global work, but must “adapt to” such a lot of local things, the local result being something “inspired by” indeed, but nothing more.