All too often, carriers do not have the full picture on a property to inform critical underwriting decisions. Additionally, after a property is underwritten, the profile of the property may never be updated again despite risk altering changes. To provide carriers with greater insight into property risk, BuildFax is pleased to announce it has expanded its underwriting insights product to include: pool safety features, fire protection upgrades and security systems.
Large upticks in construction over the past few years have led to even more property-impacting changes to the U.S. housing stock. In these instances, it’s increasingly important to confirm whether structure updates have led to changes to the risk on a carrier’s book. BuildFax’s existing underwriting product suite enables carriers to validate data, accelerating quote to bind, optimizing inspection dollars and substantiating eligibility requirements with insights into new construction, remodels, roof age and more. BuildFax’s newest underwriting insights allow for an even deeper understanding of property-impacting modifications. Some of the most crucial changes involve those that directly impact a structure’s risk: the addition of a pool, pool safety features, fire protection upgrades, and security systems.
Ensure your customers are getting the coverage they need with additional underwriting insights:
- Pool Features: The presence of a pool increases a property’s risk level, not to mention sometimes outright violates a carrier’s underwriting guidelines. With access to BuildFax’s new pool attributes, carriers can verify the presence or addition of a pool, pool house, pool deck, pool alarms or pool enclosure at scale. Not only do these insights directly support the underwriting team, but they also allow carriers to price risk competitively and drive accurate loss ratios.
- Fire and Security Features: Similarly, BuildFax helps carriers identify property characteristics that reduce risk. Among the number of fire prevention and security features BuildFax can recognize are installations or presence of: fire alarms, fire sprinklers, carbon dioxide alarm, security gate, and burglary alarm. These features also allow carriers to confirm whether properties fit within certain underwriting guidelines, but also make it easier for underwriting teams to apply relevant credits and provide validated loss ratios.
- Repair Validation: In the face of increasing natural disasters and associated perils, BuildFax supports underwriting and claims functions with reports that confirm whether a property’s past repairs most likely resulted from a paid claim. Our reports can even provide more granular detail that highlights the repairs likely resulted from fire, storm or water damage. In addition to its benefits for underwriting teams, BuildFax’s intelligence into property changes also allows the claims department to verify potential instances of claims fraud where an insured submits the same claim after moving from one carrier to another.
One carrier that recently leveraged BuildFax data to elevate their business efficiencies found BuildFax insights saved around 30 percent in additional research time developing relevant underwriting and claims strategies.
To learn more about how BuildFax’s enhanced product suite can support your underwriting function, contact us today.