The home insurance industry has just taken a step that has been postponed for years. The initiative openIDL, supported by the Linux Foundation, has launched the openIDS Homeowners Standard v.1.0, the first free, open, and production-ready insurance data standard. A common model that aims to become the “shared language” among insurers, regulators, insurtechs, and technology providers.
The announcement was made on November 20, 2025, from San Francisco and marks, according to the organization itself, a “significant milestone” for modernizing how home risk and policy data are captured, exchanged, and reported across the ecosystem.
What is the openIDS Homeowners Standard v.1.0
The openIDS Homeowners Standard v.1.0 is the first data model within the open Insurance Data Standards (openIDS) family. It is specifically aimed at home and property insurance and defines a consistent way to describe:
- risk characteristics (home, location, materials, usage),
- coverage and policy conditions,
- associated insurable objects,
- and a set of code lists and common references.
In practice, it is a reference data model: a schema indicating what fields a home policy should contain, how to name them, what values are valid, and how they should be shared between systems. All designed for real-world production use, not just laboratory testing.
The standard was developed within the openIDS Data Standards Working Group (DSWG), specifically in its Homeowners Workstream, where insurers, insurtechs, vendors, and regulatory experts participate.
Less friction, more compliance, and greater innovation
The lack of common standards in the non-life insurance sector, especially in home insurance, has had a high cost over decades. Each company defines its own formats, each regulator requests data differently, and each technological integration requires custom mapping.
According to openIDL, the goals of the standard are clear:
- Reduce reporting friction: a common format simplifies periodic submissions to supervisors and statistical offices.
- Improve regulatory compliance: with structured, consistent data, insurers can respond more quickly and cost-effectively to new regulatory demands.
- Facilitate interoperability: when everyone speaks the same data language, integrating a new technology provider or sharing information with a partner becomes less traumatic.
- Enhance advanced analytics: clean, standardized data form the basis for more precise risk models, better dashboards, and products tailored to each profile.
In the words of Josh Hershman, CEO of openIDL, the launch is “a testament to the power of collaboration” and a “dynamic, resilient, and future-oriented design,” supported by the open governance of the Linux Foundation.
A response to a long-standing need in home insurance
Reactions from openIDL members highlight just how much the sector had been asking for something like this.
For Michael Payne, Vice President of Actuarial Services and Chief Pricing Actuary at AAIS, the new standard “addresses a long-standing need” in the market and offers, for the first time, a production-ready model that combines efficiency, compliance, and potential for widespread adoption.
On the technological side, Robert Clark, founder and CEO of Cloverleaf Analytics, emphasizes that part of the know-how embedded in the standard comes from intellectual property the company has contributed after a decade of proven real-world use. He affirms that this foundation allows for launching a “commercially viable” standard from day one.
And Cory Isaacson, CEO of reThought Flood, reminds us that this is only the first step. The home standard “lays a solid foundation for building additional models,” with the potential to generate billions in savings through increased efficiency and simplified processes throughout the entire insurance value chain.
From home insurance to other lines and use cases
The Homeowners Standard v.1.0 is just the first model in a broader roadmap. openIDL aims to extend the openIDS family to other lines of business—for example, auto, commercial, catastrophic risks, or even life and health—and to various regulatory needs.
The approach is as follows:
- Start with home insurance, where the challenge of dispersed data is most evident: multiple sources, different underwriting criteria, and increasing regulatory pressure related to climate change and catastrophic risks.
- Consolidate common practices: how to describe a home, a policy, a claim, or a risk exposure.
- Gradually extend these patterns to other product types and geographies, maintaining the philosophy of open standards, no licensing costs, and community governance.
At the same time, openIDL also offers Base Standards and code lists that serve as the backbone for all these models, helping to avoid conflicts between lines and promote a more integrated view of customers and risks.
Benefits for insurers, regulators, and consumers
While it may seem technical, standardizing data has a direct impact on nearly all ecosystem actors:
- Insurers
Can streamline internal architectures, reduce custom integration projects, improve data quality control, and accelerate bringing new products to market based on advanced analytics. - Regulators and supervisors
Receive more uniform, comparable, and quickly processable information. This facilitates the detection of systemic issues, solvency monitoring, and better-informed public policy design. - Technology providers and insurtechs
Working with an open standard reduces integration costs with multiple companies and opens the door to reusable solutions deployable across markets without redesigning data models for each project. - Consumers
Although not directly visible, they benefit from products better aligned with actual risk, greater transparency in coverage and pricing, and more agile claim and purchase processes.
Ultimately, the message from openIDL is that insurance data is too important to be trapped in proprietary formats and internal silos.
An open standard under the Linux Foundation’s umbrella
openIDL is a project of the Linux Foundation focused on modernizing insurance data through open standards, shared governance, and collaboration among industry, regulators, and vendors. The Foundation provides the open governance model, community infrastructure, and expertise gained from other key projects like Linux, Kubernetes, OpenSSF, and RISC-V.
By aligning the openIDS standard with open source principles, the organization aims to:
- avoid dependency on a single provider,
- ensure transparency in model evolution,
- and enable any ecosystem participant—from large insurers to startups or regional regulators—to participate in defining future versions.
With the openIDS Homeowners Standard v.1.0 already published and available for adoption, the next challenge is achieving critical mass: getting enough insurers and technology partners to integrate it into their systems so that the standard ceases to be just a document and becomes the real foundation for data exchange in home insurance.
Frequently Asked Questions about the openIDS Homeowners Standard v.1.0
What specific problem does the openIDS Homeowners Standard v.1.0 solve?
It addresses the fragmentation of data formats in home insurance. Today, each insurer and regulator manages different models, leading to high costs for translation, integration, and reporting. The standard proposes a common, open, and production-ready model to describe risks, policies, and insurable objects.
Who can use this home insurance data standard?
Any player in the ecosystem: insurers, regulators, insurtechs, software providers, analytics firms, and organizations working with risk and policy data. The standard is free, without proprietary licenses, and publicly documented.
Is adoption of the openIDS standard mandatory in the insurance sector?
No. It is a voluntary standard driven by industry under the Linux Foundation. Its success depends on actual adoption by insurers, regulators, and technology providers. The more participants adopt it, the greater the collective benefit in interoperability and efficiency.
What comes after the home insurance data standard?
openIDL and the openIDS working group have already indicated they are developing models for other lines of business and use cases. The goal is to build a family of open standards covering much of the data needs of the insurance sector, from regulatory reporting to advanced analytics and product innovation.
Source: linuxfoundation and OpenILS Standard