Leveraging data and leaving a legacy to be proud of

Using Data to Maximize Risk Modeling
“Advances in risk modeling will play a crucial role in helping insurers and the government to evaluate exposure to catastrophic risk, take the appropriate steps to prevent losses and determine the financial resources needed to protect the economy from the next natural disaster.” David A. Sampson, President and CEO, Property Casualty Insurers Association of America

The Value of Data
By the time an insurance company realizes that it needs to begin an analysis of risk information or property characteristic data it may be too costly or time-consuming to begin collecting that information.

It is more prudent and cost effective to collect and centrally archive this information when it is available as part of the daily process of doing business. The e2Value® Smart Data Warehouse™ is able to connect properties with the additional risk data and geocoding. Everything about each property is archived together and available through a single portal. This provides our customers with all the information they need in order to analyze data and create proactive solutions that reduce risk exposure while better serving their customers. Companies should not wait until they need this data to begin collecting it.

Champions of data note that companies need to plan how data moves through a system and how it is managed from the point of creation to its long-term storage. A top priority ought to be to raise awareness about how important access to critical data is to companies. We continue to see companies struggling with fractured data stores coupled with a lack of understanding of the value that centrally-archived data can bring to a company’s ROI.

In addition to centralized storage of all properties’ data, e2Value’s Smart Data Warehouse contains even more valuable information. Whether it is building characteristics, valuations, risk data, rating data, etc., it is all archived within the Smart Data Warehouse. From this single platform customers can launch a complex analysis regarding a whole book of business, a segment of their business or a single property. e2Value’s customers can look at the Smart Data Warehouse as a way to maximize the value of information at every point of a property’s life cycle. By combining processes and technologies our customers can manage data from the moment it is created to when it is no longer necessary.

Expert Valuations with Expert Risk Assessment
We ensure that our clients can and do gain tangible and comparable returns on their technology investments of today and that our process can lead to better applications and actions in the future. Now, more than ever, companies need the right technology to access, transfer and mine data more quickly and cheaply. Our goal is getting companies to think about data instead of applications, end process instead of through process.

After a catastrophic event like a hurricane, improper premium collection can result in entire companies being wiped out. Proper ITV applied equally by all insurers would more than likely reduce the ultimate base insurance costs that consumers pay and keep more companies in business competing for consumers’ business.

A proper determination of ITV and risk exposure can be obtained with just a few property characteristics but only with applications that use the “right” characteristics and technologies that can integrate or share data with all of a company’s other applications. The ability to update, change and mine that information is a critical need. Years and years of digital data are no more valuable than piles and piles of paper should that data be in a format or system that is long passed its useful life.

Prior to the Internet and powerful centralized applications, there was no easy or accurate process, no integration or data mining. Automation has finally taken a lead position across the entire property valuation industry. With new resources available online, valuation providers can determine within minutes the specific and true value of any property along with any risk exposures.

Although we are not the first to provide the addition of risk services within our valuation platform, it is the alignment of experts in the field of valuation, address validation, public record resources, geocoding and risk data that makes us the best property-based solution for risk management.

Leverage and Legacy
Leverage. Leverage is receiving more for less. With an advantage a small input can have a large impact. In a world that is using partner-lead resources, those with partners have a significant impact and need less effort to achieve exceptional results.

Legacy. A legacy means a lasting impact beyond what was expected. Sometimes that can be a good thing. When dealing with technology it is more often a bad thing. It can mean an impact that is difficult to overcome. It can hold a company back from reaching its full potential.

Market Challenges
The competitive nature of the insurance industry combined with limited investment capital results in an increased need for agility and for technology solutions that are both innovative and cost-effective.

Today's insurance companies face multiple challenges:

• Updating legacy systems with fewer qualified developers
• Integrating segregated business processes
• Managing IT costs
• Streamlining business processes
• Satisfying and retaining current customers while attracting new ones
• Developing and maintaining business and technical agility

Solutions – Using Leverage to Utilize Legacy
Carriers’ legacy technologies may be difficult to change but most of it is stable and stability is unquestionably desirable in the high-risk insurance environment. If carriers rush to discard the technology that provides them with stability they risk chaos.

The best path, of course, falls in leveraging stability without rigidity and flexibility without chaos. For most carriers successful initiatives will include the ongoing preservation of legacy systems for the foreseeable future.

The e2Value alignment with the Microsoft Insurance Value Chain (IVC) is a comprehensive approach based on Microsoft technologies that enables Microsoft's large partner ecosystem to develop a streamlined set of integrated applications and workflows that leverage legacy systems. These solutions, which are based on industry standards, make them useful in both today’s market and in tomorrow’s, and link disconnected participants, systems and processes. Leveraging industry standards helps to minimize chaos, leads to solutions that more easily integrate within the value chain and reduces IT complexity, which leads to greater employee efficiency and reduces costs through legacy modernization.

e2Value and the Microsoft IVC partners provide global and industry standards-based solutions for insurance services. These integrated solutions enable straight-through processing, that offers LEVERAGE in the form of reduced IT costs, greatly increased paybacks and the ability to leave a legacy of results.

As a Microsoft IVC Partner, e2Value’s products are recognized and adopted as value-added services that are based on Microsoft technology. e2Value’s standardized easy-to-use technologies reduce the complexity caused by siloed processes and technologies. It also makes it easier and less costly to integrate with other IVC partner applications and with a carrier’s current and future technologies.

Using web-based industry-standard applications that can work with legacy systems and future technologies, it allows companies to utilize today’s technologies without concern about whether they will work tomorrow.

What You Need To Know
This proactive effort by e2Value ensures that our customers are provided with the best processes and services available. Being an IVC partner means that much of the “heavy lifting” has already been done for companies in regards to integration among the IVC solution providers.

What is e2Value?
Which sounds better, an orchestra or a one man band?  No single company can be all things to the insurance industry. Those that try do this for two reasons, either they don’t want to expose the fact that their systems are too difficult or too costly to integrate with other vendors or these companies want the insurance industry to believe that only they know what the industry needs.

When working with one silo-type company that offers a multitude of products, the end result is often inferior products and empty promises. We are in a world of open source and mash-ups. The ability to move beyond the stranglehold of one company or one set of applications is a basic requirement now and for the future. An open environment creates competition and rewards the customers of a market. Ten years ago Google®, Facebook® and Myspace® were distant pebbles in a pond. Today, they are helping to shape the market. They are leaders because they understand the new markets and the need to innovate.

e2Value is leading the next generation of property valuation solutions. We are the pioneer in integrating web-based property valuation services with property risk information on a single easy-to-use interface that results in advanced decision-making. The extensive data available through our products makes them critical to our customers’ decision-making processes. In addition, there is no software to install, no hardware to upgrade and our data is continually updated. Just like the other pioneers, we also know that we must innovate or die.

e2Value focuses on one market: insurance. e2Value’s products and services are built on a robust and flexible, hosted environment. For our customers, this results in minimal overhead, rapid deployment, and ease-of-use and high performance.

We are distinct in our ability to offer property-valuation technology to non-technical professionals. Our services are designed so that individuals and organizations with little or no Geographical Information Services (GIS) or property-valuation experience are able to perform risk-evaluation tasks like an expert.

In today’s world, (and even throughout history!) an orchestra will always provide a richer, fuller sound.

Don’t Add Just to Add
As sellers and buyers of technology, solutions and systems, we need the discipline to keep ourselves and help our customers focus on the fundamentals, however. Choosing what to focus on is best done by the people who must live with the consequences of that choice. In the Vietnam War, US fighter pilots had superior equipment, radar, missiles, etc. In fact the pilots had the ability to know more about their plane and surroundings than ever before. In the end, however, most of the information was not helpful when it really mattered. They had so much information they had to turn off the “noise” and focus on elements like speed, attitude and where the enemy was. The pilots had the training, history and knowledge to know what mattered. The people who built the equipment had never flown a plane in combat. Those people made noise. The noise might have been interesting, but when life or death was at stake clarity of purpose won out.

Cell phones and autos are great examples of focus. The purpose of a cell phone is to make and receive calls. However, because that does not happen each time we want it to, we are soon distracted by the add-ons of music, a camera, text capabilities, etc. You can order a car with  MP3 players and GPS navigation systems. I am not against comfort and innovation but none of the “add-ons” help you if you can’t make a call or the car is in the shop for the 15th time. Those are definitely nice items, but don’t lose sight of the core functions in pursuit of the ancillary items.

Adding things just to add them or to obscure missing core functionality, can seem like adding musicians to an orchestra, but in reality it might only be a fourth grade music class. At a very high level the functions appear similar but in the execution they are wildly different.

The Solution:
e2Value is bringing the leaders in property-risk data together to identify known risk information about a specific property location with pinpoint accuracy. Customers are able to determine if the risk exposure of a particular property meets the carrier’s policy rules and whether to accept or dismiss the applicant as potential new business. All this can be done long before the carrier incurs the expense of an on-site property valuation.

This improves efficiencies, reduces costs and reduces the carrier’s risk exposure, which makes for a more profitable business.

Leverage your results with e2Value and leave a legacy to be celebrated.