What OVERT is

Sections 17–18 built a machine that produces evidence. This section is about the rules that make the evidence usable by strangers — OVERT, the open runtime-evidence standard that governs Inference Re.

The definition

OVERT defines “the schema, chain-of-custody requirements, and audit-access protocols for runtime attestation records.” A syndicate, reinsurer, actuary, or capital-markets modelling firm can independently verify an OVERT-compliant record without relying on Glacis’s interpretation. GROUNDED · Brochure

Three components, three jobs:

Component	Question it answers	Consumer who cares
Schema	What must an attestation record contain, in what structure?	The actuary pooling experience across deployments — comparability is the prerequisite for a book
Chain of custody	How is the record’s integrity preserved from signing to audit?	The underwriter whose trigger pays real money on these records
Audit access	Who may verify, how, under what protocol?	The auditor or arbitrating party who must check the evidence without either side’s cooperation

The chain-of-custody and audit-access details get their own page (19-02); the strategic argument for why the standard must not belong to Glacis is 19-01.

What the acronym expands to

“Observable Verification Evidence for Runtime Trust.” That is the brand kit’s expansion and the canonical one — teach it, print it, put it on the slide. GROUNDED · KB

Know the erratum: the draft brochure expands OVERT as “Open Verifiable Evidence at Runtime.” The conflict has been resolved by the brochure’s owner — the brochure is wrong on this point — but the draft still circulates, so you will meet the variant in the wild. Recognize it; do not repeat it. GROUNDED · KB

The safe conversational move is still the plainest one: say “OVERT, the open runtime-evidence standard” and let the expansion stay on the slide. Nobody buys an acronym.

Why an ART product needs a standard at all

The brochure’s argument is compact: “For any ART structure to be commercially viable, the evidence driving its triggers must be produced under a standard auditable by parties other than the evidence provider.” GROUNDED · Brochure Unpack it against what Volume 1 taught about delegated authority — insurance runs on parties who verify each other:

• A parametric trigger is a contract clause. Clauses get disputed. Evidence that only the evidence vendor can interpret is worthless in a dispute. STABLE
• An accumulation facility pools signal across deployments insured by different carriers — which requires a common schema none of them owns. GROUNDED · Brochure
• A future loss model (see ILS) needs an experience base an actuary can project from — “because the denominator is independently verified, not vendor-reported.” GROUNDED · Brochure

Notice the pattern: every consumer of the evidence is a party that must be able to distrust every producer of the evidence, and verify anyway. That is what “open” is for. It is the same reason exchanges publish their rulebooks and courts publish their procedures — the neutrality of the format is what lets adversaries transact. STABLE

What OVERT is not

• Not a certification. OVERT does not say a system is safe or compliant; it standardizes the evidence of what the system did. Judgment stays with the underwriter, auditor, or regulator reading the records. GROUNDED · Brochure
• Not proprietary. The tooling around it is published openly, and the standard is developed to be verifiable by any party — the point of the independence thesis. GROUNDED · Labs
• Not finished. The draft application is candid that the underwriting-grade specification — what an OVERT record must contain for use in a parametric policy form — “does not exist anywhere in the market today” and is proposed as cohort work with syndicate and actuarial input. Hedge accordingly: the standard exists; the underwriting-grade profile of it is in-progress work. GROUNDED · Brochure

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