Gregory Maciag, president and CEO of ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development), announced his plan to retire on January 15, 2016. The ACORD board of directors accepted the plan and approved Maciag serving as an advisor for one additional year, through January 15, 2017, which will mark his 40th anniversary with the international standards organization.
Maciag was hired in 1977 to launch the ACORD Form library, which became the beacon for industry standardization and set the groundwork for a dynamic expansion in the following decades.
Maciag succeeded Robert E. Merriman as CEO in 1994 after serving in a variety of senior level positions with ACORD and the merged IIR/ACORD/IVANS during the tumultuous 1980s. “It was a difficult time,” Maciag recalls. “Industry leaders had very different opinions about the future of ACORD. I was given the opportunity to develop a vision and modify the mission to reflect the technology revolution that was under way at the time and still continues today.”
Lines of business serviced by ACORD were expanded from property and casualty to life, annuity and related health, as well as surety and reinsurance. “The requirement for data standards became obvious to everyone as they wrestled with moving data between trading partners using proprietary systems,” Maciag said.
John Leonard, president of The MEMIC Group and ACORD chairman, said, “I speak not only for the board of directors, but for all ACORD members, when I acknowledge Greg’s successful journey with us over the past four decades. Greg provided us with the vision, leadership and stewardship that cultivated partnerships and placed ACORD on the international stage. We are now one of the largest and most successful industry standards development organizations in the world.”
Under Maciag’s leadership, ACORD opened a London office in 2000. This occurred immediately after the merger with WISe (a consolidation of LIMNET in London, RINET in Brussels and the World Insurance Network). ACORD became the global industry standard for Lloyd’s and the London market. The previous merger he influenced was with the Insurance Institute for Research in the 1980s.
Work in the United States expanded, but Maciag also coordinated with industry leaders to bring ACORD into Europe, Australia, Southern Africa, China, India, Singapore and several other nations where ACORD members also conducted business.
“Maciag has been part of the insurance industry metamorphosis for almost five decades and he rattles industry alphabet-soup acronyms like no one else,” Leonard said. “Greg met every major metric over the years without fail—including expansion, growth, membership, forms, XML standards and all the financials,” Leonard added. “It was impressive. Greg spoke about the value of enterprise architecture for years and assembled a crack team that got it done. Now ACORD has a solid reference architecture for ACORD standards and the insurance industry.”
Maciag published hundreds of columns for trade publications and authored two books, The Business Information Revolution (2005) and The Real-Time World (2009). He continues to write a weekly weblog at www.acordceo.org. Leonard said: “You never replace a guy like Greg Maciag; you move on and plan to take ACORD to the next level. The new CEO certainly has big shoes to fill.”
The ACORD board will organize a five-member selection committee with three outside industry executives to identify and recommend Maciag’s successor during the coming year, Leonard noted. The board plans to announce the next CEO at the new ACORD 2015 event in November in Boca Raton, FL.
ACORD is a global, nonprofit organization serving the insurance and related industries. ACORD facilitates the development of open consensus data standards and standard forms, and works with its members and partner organizations to drive implementation of those standards. ACORD members worldwide include hundreds of insurance and reinsurance companies, agents and brokers, software providers, financial services organizations and industry associations. ACORD maintains offices in New York and London (www.acord.org).
