Marshall & Swift/Boeckh Announces Partnership with BuildFax, Industry's Leading National Building Permit Database

MILWAUKEE, Nov. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The last ten years have seen the U.S. reach a homeownership rate of nearly 70%, a national all-time high. However, the recent downturn in market values and tightening of lending criteria means individual homeowners are now spending less on new homes and are instead investing more heavily in upgrades and improvements to their existing properties. As a result, carriers of personal property insurance have begun to see a drop-off in available new business and increasing instances of undervaluation due to unreported remodeling. Today, Marshall & Swift / Boeckh (MSB), a leading provider of building cost valuation solutions, is announcing a partnership with BuildFax, an innovator in the compilation and analysis of building permit data, to offer a combined solution aimed at helping carriers reclaim millions in premium leakage by identifying unreported property changes along with actionable replacement value updates needed to maintain accurate insurance to value (ITV).

MSB's research on ITV reveals that over 64% of homes are undervalued by an average of 18%. Carriers showing an interest in book-of-business management and remediation programs need a solution that isn't just accurate and reliable, but also provides a means for ongoing change detection. MSB's Sightline solution combines reliable, insurance-ready data with two decades of experience in carrier-branded homeowner contact programs. With the BuildFax integration, the new offering will help carriers identify a broad range of property changes and discern what those changes mean from a risk management perspective.

With this new partnership, MSB's SightLine change detection service will integrate MSB property verification and replacement cost estimating services with BuildFax's proprietary database of building permit information from over 4,000 cities and counties throughout the country. The result is a holistic, pioneering solution that can 1) Tell insurance carriers what they need to know about changes in the properties they protect, 2) Verify the change in replacement value resulting from the change, and 3) Provide an ongoing method for monitoring the book of business over time. Through this new partnership, underwriters can now proactively monitor and keep current with the 5% of their portfolio that changes each year.

"For the first time, our customers will have the power to capture property change as part of their strategic approach to risk management," states Steven Brewer, Senior Vice President, Underwriting Solutions, MSB. "Our customers will significantly improve their ability to maintain limits of insurance in their book generate commensurate premium for the additional risk insured and identify populations of current and prospective customers who have improved the risk profile of their property."

"The partnership between BuildFax and MSB will improve a carrier's ability to translate building permit information into actionable changes in replacement value for affected properties," states Holly Tachovsky, Founder and President, BuildFax. "It will also benefit the policy holder, by ensuring that the investments they have made their homes to make themselves and their families more comfortable are properly insured against loss."

"With this solution, carriers can not only better protect policyholders while generating significant premium, but they can also apply this intelligence to add sophistication to how they market, price and underwrite property risk," adds Brewer.

In conjunction with MSB's Research Series about competing on information in today's changing market, MSB and BuildFax will present this topic to industry thought leaders at their newest webinar entitled "Applying New Change Detection Solutions to Enhance Portfolio Performance and Profitability" Tuesday, November 8th.

During the webinar MSB and BuildFax executives will discuss how to use this new solution to enhance the identification of risk information and improve profitability. They will also present ideas on how to combine change detection with replacement cost estimating as an integrated part of underwriting workflow. The webinar will be held Tuesday, November 8th at 2:00 pm EST. To register, visit the following link: http://www.propertycasualty360.com/webseminars/applying-new-change-detection-solutions-to-enhance or contact Kayla Merker at [email protected].

About Marshall & Swift/Boeckh (MSB)

Marshall & Swift / Boeckh (MSB) is the leading supplier of local building cost information as well as residential and commercial property valuation technology and services in the United States and Canada. Services also include MSB's InFocus Analytics, business intelligence, and industry leading "outsourcing" solutions. MSB has five offices throughout the U.S. and Canada.

About BuildFax

BuildFax, a division of BUILDERadius, is the creator of the first and only national database of historical building permit data. Co-headquartered in Austin, Texas and Asheville, North Carolina, BuildFax has created a proprietary property intelligence engine that contains building and permitting information from 4,000+ cities and counties throughout the country. Local building departments in each of these towns across the country inspect construction to make sure it meets quality and safety standards; as such it is an absolutely critical part of the public safety infrastructure. BuildFax is then able to consolidate this information into the dataset, which is a tremendous asset to professionals in the insurance, financial services, inspection, and appraisal industries, as well as buyers and sellers of property. As the best and only source of a structure's "life story," the BuildFax database continues to grow, currently covering over 74 million commercial and residential properties nationwide.

SOURCE Marshall & Swift/Boeckh