Risk & Insurance: A new alliance pushes for standards in 'Sin City': an estimated 2,500 people f

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," a manifesto of the insurance industry might read, "That the property-casualty side of the insurance business ought never meet with the life and annuity side of the business."

This year, not only did they meet--they slept in the same bed. And that seemed to suit everyone just fine.

For the first time, the 80-year-old Life-Office Management Association, a trade lobby devoted to furthering the research, education and sharing of information in the life insurance and financial services industries, held its annual convention with the Association for Cooperating Operations Research and Development, a New York-based insurance association devoted to furthering data transmission standards for insurance and reinsurance companies.

And what better venue for ACORD and LOMA to have their first affair than Las Vegas, Nev., also known as "Sin City," a city whose motto is "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

Even Gregory A. Maciag, president of ACORD, admits that he was afraid when Las Vegas was chosen as the destination for the first ACORD-LOMA convention.

"I love coming to Las Vegas," he said. "But I didn't like putting on a show in Las Vegas. That's why we were in Orlando, Fla., for 12 years." He was afraid that his convention would compete with the distractions of the city's casinos and nightlife.

"When you are in Orlando and you've got compelling content, the fact is there's not much else to do," he said. "Here there are a lot of other distractions."

Conventioneers walking from the exhibit halls on the ground floor of Bally's Hotel to the sessions in the adjoining Paris Hotel, for example, were tempted by sleek, felt-lined blackjack tables and loud, colorful slot machines open for business day and night.

Alas, some attendees succumbed to temptation and sat down at the craps tables when they could--or should--have been attending briefings on "Interoperability and Overcoming XML Challenges," for example, or "Changing the Process Flow of Data and Documents."

But even Maciag said he was willing to play the odds in his own special way. "There are some people at the craps tables but not everybody," he said, as the ACORD exhibit floor buzzed with conventioneers. "Play the odds, by the way. If you get 3,000 people here next time, that means there are more people here [at the convention]. There are going to be more people at the craps table but I'll have more people in my meeting rooms. So, in a way, I think I'm convinced that Las Vegas is probably a really great venue for us."

Could it be that the insurance industry, a world for the most part driven by siloed, conservative, regulated and regimented thinking, is warming to the idea of breaking the rules and having some fun? Or perhaps this was simply a case of having a "breakthrough," the tagline for this year's ACORDLOMA bash.

One technology consultant and another attendee from one of the nation's top carriers said they had each been to at least four industry trade shows in bas Vegas in the first six months of the year.

Despite grumbling by some attendees who had trouble distinguishing between life-oriented and property/casualty oriented software vendors crowding the exhibit floor, trade show officials pronounced the ACORD-LOMA alliance a success. An estimated 2,500 people attended the show, and that number could well grow in the near future.

Maciag said ACORD had been in talks with other trade organizations about joining forces. "What this industry needs--and I said this a couple of years ago--is to take these disparate shows that we've got, especially with these trade associations focused on technology and systems, and cooperate," he said.