Business News: Carpe Data, Betterview and Synpulse, Aon Make Announcements

Carpe Data Launches Data Set for Carriers

Carpe Data announced the launch of a new commercial data set that it says will help property and casualty insurers better classify and understand risks.

“With this launch, we’re delivering brand new data on more than 25 million businesses to commercial lines insurers,” said Chief Executive Officer Max Drucker in a press release. “Insurance companies now have a powerful new source for answering existing questions, as well as for evaluating many dimensions of risk not previously available.”

This Carpe Data platform consists of three offerings for property and casualty insurers:

• A classification system that provides more accurate classification categories enabling insurers to gain a clear sense of the specific activities the business actually conducts.
• Risk Characteristics, which is an array of data points that identify current attributes of a business.
• Next Generation Score and Indexes, whichare predictive scoring mechanisms of various business dimensions made available by leveraging emerging and alternative data.

Carpe Data is an analytics provider based in Santa Barbara, California. The company uses artificial intelligence to monitor social and internet data, as well as alternative sources of unstructured data such as shopping cart or online purchase information, user reviews, and other sources to provide far greater specificity to insurers underwriting commercial business than traditional sources, the company said.

Betterview Teams with Synpulse, Geospatial Intelligence Center

Betterview, a San Francisco-based firm that provides property data to insurance carriers, has teamed up with Synpulse, a management consulting firm founded in Zurich, Switzerland that helps property and casualty insurers upgrade their information technology systems.

Marc Kirchhofer, manager of Synpulse, said that his firm surveyed risk engineering executives and learned that they place a high value on third-party risk estimation through third-party data integration.

“One of the more challenging data pre-fill elements has always been roof information, which until now required boots on the ground inspections, reviewing aerial imagery manually, or asking customers about their roofs,” Kirchhofer said in a prepared statement. “Synpulse can now pre-fill Betterview’s predictive roof score and characteristics into in-house or third-party systems like Loss Control 360 or Guidewire to help insurers accelerate their underwriting decisions and enhance straight-through processing of submissions.”

Synpulse said carriers can implement Betterview’s product as a stand-alone product or integrate it into the underwriting process. Betterview can accept comma-separated-values (CSV) files for large renewal books and recently bound new business. Betterview can also can set up access for underwriting teams on the internet, allowing them to investigate properties that need further review.

In a separate announcement, Betterview said it has integrated aerial images taken by the Geospatial Intelligence Center into its platform. The GIC is a unit of the National Insurance Crime Bureau that takes aerial photographs to assess damage immediately after natural disasters.

Aon Launches Adjustable Rate Motor Carrier Insurance Program

Aon announced the launch of a motor-carrier insurance program that adjusted rates monthly and reduces required down payments, to be offered exclusively through the “mobile-friendly” CarrierHQ online portal.

Aon said it uses data from federally mandated electronic logging devices and its proprietary rating algorithm to provide fleet owners with a driver’s score based on his or her actions behind the wheel. Fleet owners will pay a variable insurance rate per truck based on that score. Those with safe driving actions will receive lower premiums, while risky driving actions will result in higher premiums, the Chicago-based professional services firm said.

Rates are eligible for adjustment each month, giving small fleet owners the ability to directly influence their insurance cost, the second-largest fixed expense for small fleets, Aon said in a press release. Fleets looking to gain additional cash flow flexibility may couple the insurance product with a CarrierHQ Certified Factoring Partner, enabling the fleet to pay monthly insurance installments without any large down payments or costly premium financing.

“In many cases, the upfront premium investment is a major barrier to entry or growth,” said Mark Epperson, executive director, Aon. “By eliminating upfront fees and premium finance charges, we are empowering economic possibility by freeing up capital and improving cash flow, which will allow owners to grow their business.”

The product will be rolled out nationwide and ultimately be available in all states except New York, Alaska, and Hawaii, Aon said.