LIMRA Data Exchange Standards Community Support Forum

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  • 1.  Special characters in employee and dependent names

    Posted 08-30-2022 14:32
    A carrier accepting LDExBEM payloads from us recently rejected one of the employees in an LDExBEM payload the first name of a dependent contained an apostrophe ("Kai'lyn"). In working to resolve the issue, our client service team requested that we add a parameter to our LDExBEM extract to filter out special characters. I am inclined to reject this request as a defect in the carrier's LDExBEM reader, but I'm interested in other companies' opinions on this subject. Should a tech partner (Sender) be expected, upon request, to filter out certain punctuation characters from names, or should the the recipient be expected to handle this?

    And if tech partners (Senders) are expected to do this, should it be noted anywhere in the Coding Supplement? How about in LDExBCM (configuration management) payloads?
    #LDEx-BEM

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    Lyle Griffin
    President
    Selerix Systems, Inc.
    McKinney TX
    2145025573
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  • 2.  RE: Special characters in employee and dependent names

    Posted 08-30-2022 16:37
    I would not expect the sender to filter out punctuation that is common to names, which to me would be apostrophes and hyphens.  Those are characters many people (including yours truly!) have in their name and I think a receiver should be able to handle.

    That said, I don't think carriers/receivers should be expected to handle special characters NOT native to names, such as " @ # $ ~ etc.

    Instead of allowing for this to be open to sending/receiver preference and opinion, should we instead look to update the definition of what's considered valid for name fields to eliminate some of the gray (and therefore variation from carrier to carrier?).  So for example, refine the definition for name fields to specifically state that alpha characters plus apostrophes and hyphens are all valid as part of the standard?

    ​​​

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    Timothy O'Connor MBA
    AVP, Partner Integration
    Voya Financial, Inc.
    Minneapolis MN
    15153391916
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  • 3.  RE: Special characters in employee and dependent names

    Posted 08-30-2022 16:56
    Very valid point, Mr. O'Connor. I completely agree. Let's clarify the description in the schema to note that apostrophes, spaces, and dashes should be explicitly allowed, but other special characters (#, ? , !, ...) should not be allowed.

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    Lyle Griffin
    President
    Selerix Systems, Inc.
    McKinney TX
    2145025573
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  • 4.  RE: Special characters in employee and dependent names

    Posted 08-31-2022 10:33
    ADP has experienced the same request. I agree to refine the definition for name fields.

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    Lynda Whitmore
    LDEx FORUM Admin & Moderator
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  • 5.  RE: Special characters in employee and dependent names

    Posted 08-31-2022 15:16
    I would agree with a description update to help better communicate expected characters within a name field.

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    Michael J Grudgings
    Business Architect, Data Standards | LL Global, Inc.
    300 Day Hill Road, Windsor, CT, 06095
    t: (860) 298-3850 | mgrudgings@limra.com
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