Frank J. Coyne is chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Verisk Analytics. 

A Message from Frank J. Coyne

The current business environment presents many challenges. Market forces continue to put significant pressure on the profitability of insurance companies and others involved in the business of risk. Economic and environmental factors continue to fuel competition. And as competition intensifies, the industry is also seeing a change in the very nature of competition.

The keys to surviving and thriving will be gaining a true understanding of what drives strategic growth in the evolving marketplace, evaluating risk with more comprehensive analysis, and targeting efficiency and effectiveness to drive profitability. Keeping up with advances in technology and implementing them in the most efficacious ways will be vital in gaining this understanding and executing against the core fundamentals — cost-based pricing, solid underwriting, sound loss adjudication, and prudent risk management.

In our continued commitment to helping our customers handle marketplace challenges and respond to change, Verisk Analytics is staying on top of critical industry issues. We’re continually updating our products and services. We’re performing in-depth analyses to seek answers. And we’re taking advantage of innovative technologies, such as predictive modeling, to develop tools you can use to help make sound business decisions and enhance every link in your value creation chain.

One of Verisk’s key objectives has been to meet the expanding needs of our customers through innovation, and we’ve advanced a number of initiatives. By combining innovation, industry expertise, sophisticated technology, and new and varied sources of information, Verisk launched several products and implemented many key product enhancements.

These new and enhanced products are helping insurers make better decisions for pricing, underwriting, and loss adjudication. One area where Verisk is investing significant resources is predictive analytics. We recently launched a risk-based pricing model for personal auto — and we’re working on several other predictive analytic products and tools for pricing, due to launch in 2008. Verisk is also using predictive analytics to enhance the value of our core products.

In addition to predictive analytics, Verisk is investing in many other areas, including:

  • property valuation and replacement-cost tools
  • catastrophe risk management tools
  • claims analytics
  • policy-level transaction information
  • GIS platforms to help analyze property risk

In the regulatory and legal arena, Verisk continues its ongoing review of social, legislative, and regulatory changes to keep our programs up to date. We maintain a specialized staff of insurance experts and lawyers dedicated to developing and updating our programs to comply with all legal and regulatory requirements. As an example, our ISO subsidiary is submitting forms and rules filings to state insurance departments that revise our terrorism programs in response to the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007.

We're also investing in our top-notch staff of industry experts. Our staff includes more than 175 actuaries, including 50 fellows and associates of the Casualty Actuarial Society; more than 145 Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter designees; and more than 400 other professional designees. ISO also has more Certified Fire Protection Specialists than any other company in the country, and our staff members hold more than 300 graduate degrees in statistical modeling, engineering, geology, economics, and many other disciplines.

We continue to invest in our operations and infrastructure, as well. We executed initiatives to safeguard customer information and ensure compliance with legislative, contractual, and regulatory requirements regarding Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Personal Health Information (PHI). And for the sixth consecutive year, ISO earned the TruSecure certification, an ongoing security assessment to ensure we maintain a secure computing environment. We’re also investing in customer access to our systems. We have improved the availability of all ISO systems to 99.920 percent. Our continued improvements in operations and infrastructure all contribute to the economies of scale no single insurer can match.

The industry is at the beginning of a fundamental change in the business of risk. Faced with increasing marketplace pressures, escalating exposure growth, and other significant challenges, embracing new technology and advances in analytics will be vital to your success.

At Verisk Analytics, we’re solidly committed to being your business ally, providing essential services focused on data, analytics, and decision-support tools to help you handle current and future challenges. Year after year, we strive to increase the value and responsiveness of our products and services by addressing your needs.