Publications
Conference Paper at Markup UK on ‘InsurML: A Markup Language for Commercial Insurance’ by John Cummins (2025)
As part of Axiome’s research and development activities, work has been undertaken to establish a domain-specific markup language, InsurML, for the structured authoring of insurance contracts. Using structured authoring approaches with semantic enrichment, policy wordings can be transformed into dynamic, customisable objects with greater levels of ‘computability’, thereby paving the way towards a more robust, digital future for the insurance industry with greater levels of structured data. This paper concerns the context and initial development of InsurML, an XML markup language that is being designed specifically for the creating computable contracts for commercial insurance.
Journal Publication on ‘Computable contracts for insurance: establishing an insurance-specific controlled natural language – InsurLE ’ by John Cummins, Bob Kowalski, Jacinto Davila and Dave Ovenden (2024)
As part of Axiome’s research and development activities, work has been undertaken to establish a controlled natural language, InsurLE for the computational representation of insurance contracts. InsurLE is a domain-specific extension of LE (Logical English), which in turn is ‘syntactic sugar’ for the purely logical subset of the computer language Prolog and other logic programming languages.
Journal Publication on ‘Transforming Commercial Contracts through Computable Contracting’ by John Cummins and Christopher Clack (2022)
As an Innovator in Residence and Honorary Research Fellow at UCL’s Computer Science Department, John Cummins worked with Chris Clack (UCL’s Centre for Blockchain Technology) on a paper that describes computable contracting in the context of contract automation, as well as the considerations for successful implementation of computable contracting approaches.
White Paper on ‘Automating Reinsurance through Computable Contracting’ by John Cummins (2020)
With funding from the Lighthill Risk Network and steered by Dickie Whitaker, CEO of the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework, an industrial research project was undertaken by John Cummins in 2019/2020 to look at the application of computable contracting to the (re)insurance industry. In what is considered a visionary piece of work, the digital future of the insurance industry is mapped out in detail.
White Paper on ‘Developing a Legal Specification Protocol: Technological Considerations and Requirements’ by Professor Oliver Goodenough (2019)
Oliver Goodenough is a prominent thought leader in the area of computable contracts. This general paper on specifying a protocol for the law that underpins greater computability was undertaken in collaboration with Codex at Stanford University and was also supported by the Legal Technology Laboratory. (www.thelegaltechlab.com).
