As buyer expectations in personal property insurance move toward faster quotes and more seamless transactions, the breadth and quality of prefill data becomes more important in supporting customer-friendly workflows. Prefill sources that dependably and accurately deliver “hits” on property addresses can support a better process for insurers, agents, and their customers.
The leader in property prefill just got better with another 19 million addresses added to SmartSource® in 360Value®, Verisk’s replacement cost estimate (RCE) solution that can help maintain insurance to value across the policy life cycle. Through SmartSource, the prefill tool within 360Value, insurance-ready, property-specific information is now available for more than 124 million U.S. addresses to help populate applications and validate homeowner- and agent-provided information.
Unique data resources yield deeper insight
SmartSource now covers more properties in greater detail across the country, making it significantly better than traditional assessor data by providing insurers with robust property information from multiple sources. The latest enhancements, mostly capturing one- to four-family residences, add up to double-digit gains in hit rates for Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia. See the map below for the coverage percentage by state.
SmartSource uncovers as many as 68 property-specific characteristics, using self-learning algorithms to continually refine the database by identifying the most reliable source for each property characteristic. The new data improves hit rates in SmartSource for the majority of characteristics that drive reliability of reconstruction cost estimates (RCEs). These include a 17 percent better hit rate than before for exterior wall finishes and increases of 3-5 percent for other key characteristics such as total finished square feet, year built, number of stories, foundation type, garages and carports, and fireplaces.
All of these items were among the nine identified as critical to reliable RCEs in Verisk’s 360Value Home Characteristics Study. SmartSource captures those characteristics and much more to deliver refined prefill for a smoother application process with fewer changes between initial quote and bind.