The Canadian Life Insurance EDI Standards (CLIEDIS), the life insurance industry’s not-for-profit organization responsible for advancing electronic data exchange, announced on Wednesday that its executive director, Julie Parrott, is retiring.

Parrott has been with CLIEDIS since 1998, three years after it was founded. The organization was created with a mission of helping the life and health insurance industry develop and implement common data standards in order to improve efficiency and facilitate compliance.

As the organization will be considering some strategic changes at an upcoming planning session, Parrott says it is an appropriate time for her to step down.

“CLIEDIS is evolving. We’re having a strategic planning meeting in mid-June, and we’re going to talk about the role of the executive director and whether we need to go in different directions with different skill sets,” she says. “So, this seems like a good time for me to make a change.”

Parrott has agreed to stay on board until the end of the year to assist in recruiting a successor and supporting the transition.

“Julie has been a pivotal, long-serving and loyal member of the CLIEDIS community for over 18 years and while she will be greatly missed, we are truly happy for her and wish her nothing but the best in her retirement,” said CLIEDIS co-chairmen Alan Bett and Andy Cunningham in a statement.

Parrott says she is pleased with the progress CLIEDIS has made toward electronic data exchange in the life insurance industry, particularly in the past few years. She notes that the organization’s membership continues to grow, and almost all life insurance carriers are now working on implementing data feeds.

“In the past two to three years, there has been such a shift in the progress we have made, the progress the industry has made with data feeds,” Parrott says. “It’s quite different than it was way back when I started, when all we would do was talk about standards, and nobody was actually implementing them.”

It’s important for CLIEDIS to evolve over time and adapt to the changing needs of the industry, Parrott says: “The industry is changing. CLIEDIS needs to look at what changes we need to make and go from there.”

Prior to joining CLIEDIS, Parrott worked in the life insurance industry, including positions with Toronto-based Canada Life Assurance Co. and Halifax Life Insurance Co.

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