Underwriting innovation: The 2021 year in review

December 23, 2021 / 2 min read

This year was hardly business as usual—for Verisk or our customers.

Despite the continued challenges posed by the pandemic, we’ve drawn inspiration from our customers, and continued to innovate for them and provide them with excellent service. As we reflect on 2021, I want to share some of the highlights from the ISO team and look ahead to the work that’s got us energized for 2022.

underwriting digital transformation

Doubling down on data

Last year, a record number of insurance companies began contributing data to the ISO Statistical Database, joining hundreds of existing contributors who are leveraging this dataset for data-driven product innovation and market intelligence. By the end of 2021, we expect 40 more companies will begin contributing data. Thanks to a 6.2 percent growth in contributory data to our A-PLUS™ and Coverage Verifier^SM (CV) products, insurers have even deeper data assets to inform their underwriting.

Key program updates

From virtual currencies to cannabis, the nature of homeowners risk exposure is changing. This year, we filed a major enhancement to the ISO Homeowners program that addresses these, and other emerging risk exposures and published new actuarial research to help inform personal auto pricing. For commercial underwriters, both the ISO Businessowners and ISO General Liability programs are undergoing extensive updates that include significant classifications enhancements, new forms and endorsements, and new loss costs. With the launch of our new Size of Risk Rating Supplement, we’re offering insurers a powerful new tool to help them more accurately price liability risks.

Driving digital transformation

It’s not just where we work that’s changing, but how. We’re helping insurers become better digital versions of themselves. For small commercial insurers, we opened up new data sources this year to help them win the race to zero application questions. For personal lines carriers, we introduced solutions to enhance usage-based auto insurance and forged new partnerships to help mitigate wildfire risk. We’ve made strategic acquisitions to provide insurers with the intelligence and agility to time and tailor customer marketing interactions and enriched our solutions with 1.3 billion records of detailed legal activity. We’re also focusing on improving how you work with us. To help you work faster with ISO Loss Costs, we introduced a new tool that lets you download our loss costs for the states or lines you need more efficiently. A major new update to ISO Electronic Rating Content™ can help insurers automate the process of ingesting, analyzing, and implementing our rating data.

Log in to ISOnet^® to download our 2021 Year in Review and learn more about what we’re planning for 2022.

Underwriting innovation: 2021 year in review

Doubling down on data

Key program updates

Driving digital transformation