As every insurance carrier pursues market opportunities, they take on new challenges for their underwriters. Suffice it to say, one size does not fit all when it comes to inspections. Very few vendor partners are well positioned to assist carriers with these challenges. However, with a veteran staff of insurance professionals, Millennium Information Services is well prepared to identify and solve those new issues with confidence.
Get Information You Need
Whether a carrier expands into a new geographic area or sees a change in their customer’s behavior, adapting their inspection process is critical. Insurance carriers do not just need to understand the changes developing within their customer base. They also need to be able to gather specific data on how these changes are affecting the risks they insure.
Urban Areas: Rehabbed Homes
A Millennium client that specifically covers urban areas, which are primarily made up of older homes, needed additional insight into these risks. These homes are often either in need of updating or have already undergone full rehabs. This client hoped to avoid major losses through high-risk homes in need of updating. Originally, this client attempted to get the information they needed through an Electrical Heating and Plumbing supplement. Although this provided significant details regarding these systems, the carrier needed specific information which would indicate prior rehabilitation efforts. To meet this need, Millennium created an entirely new supplement, designed to fit their specifications and inform underwriters if a home has been extensively remodeled recently. The ability to designate rehabbed homes from those in need of updating allowed this client to offer discounts or other incentives to homeowners with lower risk dwellings.
High-Value Homes: Technology Early Adopters
Some new client opportunities are not geographic but are instead based on consumer demographics that a carrier may choose to target. With advances in home protection devices, many carriers are now considering, if not already providing discounts and incentives to homeowners who are embracing the latest home technologies, especially devices like temperature and flood monitors.
One of Millennium’s carriers who provide sophisticated coverages to mid and high-value homes needed to verify their customer’s utilization of protective smart home devices. Millennium was able to incorporate the identification of this type of technology into our inspection process specifically for that client with new smart home referrals. These referrals alert this carrier when a homeowner has implemented some of these devices so they can apply policy incentives for select policyholders.
Specific Underwriting Guidelines: Highly Scrutinized Inspections
While some carriers may not have demographic or geographic needs that warrant a specific solution, many still have very specific underwriting guidelines to which their inspection vendors need to adhere. For example, while Millennium’s commercial inspection forms cover all the critical data points needed to properly rate these risks, carriers need inspectors and quality review staff to observe a set of guidelines specific to their requirements. For this particular need, Millennium field management maintains specialized inspector training for each carrier program and provides details regarding the specific requirements of each client to ensure that the carrier specific instructions are understood and applied uniformly in the field and by our quality review team.
Each time an insurance company pursues new market opportunities, their underwriters will face new challenges. To be effective business partners, their vendors need to be prepared to help develop solutions and strategies to meet those challenges with confidence. Millennium Information Services has a staff with decades of underwriting experience and is able to provide carriers with solutions to every unique challenge they face.
