The Financial Industry Business Data Model, FIB-DM, is a complete model transformation of FIBO, the Financial Industry Business Ontology. Working with major financial institutions, the Enterprise Data Management Council created FIBO as the open-source industry standard for financial concepts, their relationships, and definitions.
With 3,016 normative entities released in January 2025, FIB-DM is the most extensive blueprint for Financial Institutions and their regulators.
The entity-relationship diagram below models insurance and guaranties. An Insurer issues the Insurance Policy, a Contract with a counterparty, the Policyholder. Insurers also issue Letters of Credit that exemplify insurance-backed and collateralized Guarantees.
The next diagram shows the FIBO data model base packages. The arrows indicate dependencies, ontology-includes in the FIBO, and Supertypes in the data model.
The Object Management Group (OMG) upper ontologies in grey define generic constructs; they provide ultimate supertypes for entities in FIBO Foundation (FND) packages. Business Entities (BE) and Finance Business & Commerce (FBC) packages in green define financial concepts applicable to all sub-domains, insurance banking, and capital markets. They provide deep entity hierarchies for legal entities and their business role or function.
Finally, specialized packages design Finance sub-domains, banking in blue, and financial instruments in orange.
Q: No dedicated Insurance package? How do FIBO and the data model support our design?
data architects and business users ask me.
The Enterprise Data Management Council, EDMC, has highly qualified ontologists who work with domain experts from member Financial Institutions (FIs) to define and delineate business concepts and their relationships.
When the EDMC launched the industry standard a few years ago, FIs wanted Securities and Derivatives and provided the expertise. Only recently did the focus move to retail banking, resulting in the Loans & Mortgages ontologies and FIB-DM packages.
As Banks stepped up in 2023, Insurance companies would speak with the EDMC and launch a FIBO Insurance content group.
A: The industry standard covers approximately 60% of an Insurance Enterprise Ontology or Data Model in, OMG, FIBO Foundation, Finance Business & Commerce, and Business Entities.
Review the list report of the 3,016 FIB-DM entities.
- OMG diagrams show foundational building blocks and representation of ISO-derived countries.
- The 252 entities in BE Entities packages provide organization structure, ownership, government, corporate officers, and shareholders.
- There are 594 entities in FBC for accounts, agreements (contracts), identifiers and registrations, regulations, balances and payments, etc.
- 636 entities in the FIBO Foundation model appraisals, contacts, commitments, jurisdiction, amounts, addresses, services, and schedules.
Note the Insurance Policy subtype in the E/R diagram. As of FIBO 2024/Q4, the only specialized type is Bond Insurance. This is where you add subtypes for Life, Car, Property, and Commercial insurance policies.
The latest data model release report on the FIB-DM website already includes more insurance-related entities —they are your anchors for adding insurance-specific content: Financial Product, has Date Insured, Insurance Company, Insurance Service, has Coverage Area, has Effective Date, has Premium Amount, Claim, Contracts, Counterparties, and Payments.
Conclusion: We should leverage the industry standard rather than reinvent it. We should subtype our insurance-specific entities from the appropriate FIBO supertypes.