All insurance carriers are not alike. Each one underwrites properties differently, has different priorities regarding remediating different kinds of hazards and issues, has different instructions for inspectors, and so on. One carrier may be concerned with the number of windows in a home and be less concerned with the number of un-railed steps outside of the home. Conversely, another insurer may be less concerned about the stairs or windows, and have a greater concern regarding adjacent structures. Because of these differences in concerns, property inspection providers must approach inspections for various carriers differently. Regardless of which factors they want emphasized, the need for quality inspection results that give them specific data remains paramount. Therefore, a good property inspection business partner will take the time and resources to accommodate a carrier’s particular needs.
Investing In Customized Training
There are numerous ways for property inspection providers to accommodate for a carrier’s individual needs. For example, each of Millennium’s clients use one of several replacement cost calculators to obtain replacement costs for their policies. The different attribute types employed by these calculators require that the data gathering on inspections be approached differently depending on the replacement cost tool employed. In order to ensure that inspections meet specific client needs, and in the most efficient way possible, Millennium’s training team has created a series of supplemental training sessions, geared specifically toward each client’s particular needs.
The effectiveness of this additional training resource can be seen in a recent example. A new client had very specific requirements for classifying property attributes, some of which were deviations from what other carriers required for that specific replacement cost tool. Once these differences were recognized by Millennium’s Quality Assurance team, inspectors were enrolled in training sessions that focused on particular areas that were identified as “frequent” by the carrier as a variance from their usage of the tool. These areas included specific construction types, house style definition, and specific exterior wall material classifications. After completing the training session, inspectors were required to take and pass a learning assessment on the material and potentially undergo further specific training with a manager. These specific training sessions were introduced to our field team in March of 2018. Within two months, instances of the issues covered in the sessions decreased overall by 20%, with some of them individually decreasing by more than 60%.
This kind of targeted training has been effective with multiple carriers. In another case, a client’s underwriting team wanted to be informed of a particular home detail as part of the inspection process. In order to ensure inspectors took special note of that detail during inspections, Millennium’s training unit implemented specific sessions on the details to observe and specific instructions regarding its notation on the inspection report. Through this exercise, the occurrence of missing that specific detail went from 2.4% to .4% in just two months.
Because different carriers, at different times, may be concerned with different, distinctive factors, their inspection needs are dynamic and individualized. In order to consistently get the results desired, your inspection provider(s) must adjust their services for you. Whether it’s targeted training or creating new inspection procedures for unique policies, a high quality, customer-focused property inspection business partner like Millennium is uniquely capable to accommodate your specific needs.
Why are physical inspections vital to estimating roof life?
Through our work over the last 25 years, Millennium has developed an extensive inspection database with over 12 million property records, which we regularly analyze to identify trends in specific regions, states and local areas for our clients. One area of particular concern to our clients is roofs. You may be interested to know that we find roof issues on 16.9% of the properties we inspect nationwide.
At a regional level, the South has the highest incidence of roof conditions at 22.3%, followed by the Northeast 17.9%, Midwest 15.0% and West 12.3%. Millennium provides our clients with data analyses on numerous other hazard conditions including ITV and TLA variances, tree hazards, dangerous dog breeds, unfenced pools and trampolines, uneven sidewalks and driveways, and steps and porches without railings, to name just a few.
In addition to analytical data, Millennium Information Services provides insurance carriers with a crucial element in the underwriting process for commercial, farm and residential properties: a physical inspection report. Our experienced inspectors uncover vital information about an insured premises — information that’s often invisible to the untrained eye and undetectable through aerial imagery, which, in addition to frequently being outdated and incomplete, lacks sufficient visibility of the most common hazards and adverse conditions.
Quality information is essential to successful underwriting. Profitable decisions depend on your ability to get the clearest, most detailed view of both individual properties, broader, regional issues and your complete book of business.
Millennium inspection reports provide detailed documentation on all conditions, risks and hazards observed at the property that may contribute to future loss and claim expenditures, along with a wide array of photographs of the exterior, interior and surrounding premises to convey a true picture of exposure in a property’s current condition. The level of detail we provide enables insurance professionals to make more intelligent underwriting decisions based on comprehensive, up-to-date and accurate property data.
Through our MAPS inspection workflow platform, Millennium gives our clients the ability to mine your own inspection data and conduct analysis on all of the property attributes and characteristics captured in the inspection report. Which hazard conditions are prevalent in your book of business and where are they found? Which agents are driving these quality-of-business issues? Millennium provides you invaluable data and tools to proactively manage your property business, reduce losses and achieve your growth and profitability objectives.
The bottom line is, when it comes to risk assessment and underwriting, it pays to inspect the uninspected.
