TELEBIB2, the standard for the exchange of information in the Insurance industry, is owned by the "Commission Mixte de Suivi / Gemengde Opvolg Commissie" ("Joint Observation Committee"), a committee within Assuralia where representatives of the insurers and of the intermediairies work together to come to recommendations with the purpose to improve the productivity within the industry. Formerly, this committee was known as the "Commission Mixte de Productivit� / Gemengde Commissie Productiviteit" (Joint Committee on Productivity).

1.1. From TELEBIB to TELEBIB2.

The session of the Joint Committee on Productivity of may 19th 1994 decided that TELEBIB, existing already since 1986, was in an urgent need of revision. It was stated that an object-oriented structuring would be a far better alternative to the insurance domains structuring, which had been the basis of TELEBIB and which was no longer corresponding with the evolution of the systems witin the industry. This new TELEBIB has since that moment been named TELEBIB2

For the realisation of TELEBIB2, the session of june 16th 1994 installed a working group. That group is made up of representatives of the insurers, of the intermediairies, and of ASSURNET. The intermediairies asked for, and obtained, the presence of representatives of their software suppliers. Their main role is to procure the intermediairies with the necessary technical support. Assurnet, now (2009) Portima is the organisation, owned by the insurers, which runs the sectoral platform.

The activities of the working group are co-ordinated by the TELEBIB-Co-ordinator who reports on all activities of the working group at the Joint Observation Committee.

1.2. Purpose of the manual.

The purpose of this manual is to assist the users of TELEBIB2 in the implementation.

1.3. Other necessary documents.

The manual is part of a set of documents offered to the users, and which complete each other.

The other documents that exist and which must be kept available to the reader are :

- the TELEBIB2 syntax, - the repertories of the collections and of the segment groups, - the repertory of the segments, - the repertories of the composite and of the simple data elements, and - the repertory of the values of the coded data elements.

Temporarily it is also still necessary to have access to TELEBIB and to the conversion table from TELEBIB to TELEBIB2.

For the realization of TELEBIB2, the working group found inspiration at UN/EDIFACT. The result will be familiar to those who have already knowledge of that international standard.

It must be pointed out that TELEBIB2 does not conform to UN/CEFACT for the full one hundred percent. To be able to respond in the best way to the needs of the Belgian insurance industry, some components have been interpreted in a specific way.

In the repertories, only some of the UN/CEFACT segments have been adopted, and a series of new segments have been added, either in replacement of existing ones which did not really respond to the Belgian needs, either denoting concepts not present in UN/CEFACT.

Nonetheless can be argued that the differences from UN/CEFACT do not lock out the handling of TELEBIB2 in a pure EDIFACT environment. Companies that already use UN/EDIFACT will have to adapt their existing environment only to a small extent. On the other hand one could argue that companies which implement TELEBIB2 actually build an even broader basis they eventually can use when moving into UN/EDIFACT for their electronic information exchanges with trading partners from other industries.

2.2. Genericity.

2.2.1. Definition

In accordance with the mission, the working group delivered generic results. This means that the collections and the segment groups in TELEBIB2 can be used for different specific uses. The collection "contract" for example, can be used for the exchange of information, either about policies from different Insurance-domains (branches), either about policies covering different branches, and either about all actions that can possibly occur upon a policy. In that same mindset, the generic segment group "risk-object" can be used for the exchange of information about either a vehicle, or either a building.

2.2.2. Motivation

This generic approach was chosen because the working group has the idea that TELEBIB2 must only be a structure where a sending application can deposit and identify data. It is up to the application in itself to decide what data are to be delivered. On the other hand it is up to the receiving application to retrieve in that same structure the necessary data. And here too it is up to the receiving application to decide which data it needs.

In TELEBIB2, no messages are being defined. Meaning, it is up to the exchanging partners to agree on the information to be exchanged.

The only binding agreement in TELEBIB2 is about the relations in between the distinct levels of information, and is about the order in which the distinct types of information must be present on those distinct levels.

2.3. Basic principle for information-exchange.

Information is to be understood as a collective, as a generic name for data. In a TELEBIB2 exchange every data (element) will be individually identified. Such identification happens on the basis of distinct concepts.

For a data (element) to be exchanged, it is placed in a segment. The choice of the segment is made with respect to the content of the data (element). Example given, if the data is a date, then it must be placed in a DTM segment, is the data an amount, then it must be placed in a MOA segment.

Every segment is being identified by a segment tag. Examples are DTM and MOAVoorbeelden hiervan zijn DTM en MOA. In a segment, a data (element) is being further defined by a qualifier. Example given, a qualifier will indicate that a date is a date of birth or a date effective, orthat an amount is a premium or an insured value. Aside from the qualifier and from the explicit value of the data (element) other information about the data (element) can be present within the segment. For an amount the currency can be added, for a date the format as expressed can be added. All bits of information about a data (element) are being placed in data elements which have their specific position in the segment. In some cases, and this purely for technical reasons, data elements are grouped in composite data elements. Data elements which are not placed in composite data elements are called simple data elements.

A complete description of the segments, of the composite and of the simple data elements can be found in the respective repertories. To point out these are technical concepts, these segments, composite and simple data elements received names in English.

2.4. Cohabitation of TELEBIB and TELEBIB2

In accordance with the recommendation of the joint committee on productivity to guarantee the upward compatibility in between TELEBIB and TELEBIB2, the working group used the content of TELEBIB as a basis for its proceedings. As a result, the generic collections do at least permit the exchange of all data of TELEBIB.

To help the user when converting the identification of some data by its TELEBIB code to the identification of that same data in TELEBIB2, a conversion table per collection has been added tot TELEBIB2.

Such table contains :

- the TELEBIB code - the segment tag of the segment where the data must be placed when in TELEBIB2 - the qualifier defining such data within the segment.

Segment tag and qualifier can exist on four different levels. They indicate the level of the data (element) within a collection.
(29.11.2013 - This limitation of 4 levels is historical and had to do with the coexistence of Telebib and Telebib2. Today such limitation is no longer valid.)

The working group managed to transpose all lists of values from TELEBIB into TELEBIB2. That is why in TELEBIB2 the TELEBIB codes, of the data that relate to a list of values, are used to retrieve such list of values in TELEBIB. The way this is achieved is explained in the description of the special role of the qualifiers of the segments ATT, BIN, GIS and QRS.

The transposition of the lists of values from TELEBIB does not mean that TELEBIB must persist. Following some not yet defined period, the lists of values will be the only component of TELEBIB still in use. As these have been transposed into TELEBIB2, TELEBIB will phase out. The said conversion table will no longer be of any use and will disappear too.

By analogy with UN/EDIFACT, TELEBIB2 is an assembly of distinct components. These are the repertories and the syntax.

For the sake of completeness should be added that there also exist rules for the design of collections and segment groups. These do only matter to the working group and are not being published.

3.1. The repertories.