Key Metrics Allow Brokers and Risk Managers To Benchmark Commercial Insurance Against 75,000 Companies
New York, November 8, 2006 – Advisen Ltd., the leading provider of analytics, benchmarking and market information to the global commercial insurance industry, today announced that its benchmarking program database has reached 500,000 programs. Advisen’s Program Benchmarking application compares current and historical premiums, limits and retentions as well as rate online and other similar ratios against peer groups assembled from among 75,000 commercial insurance buyers.
Advisen Benchmarking allows brokers and risk managers to benchmark current premiums, limits and retentions to similar organizations. It provides metrics for what other companies buy and how much they pay for similar coverage. Brokers can use this functionality to show a client how a given quote compares to similar organizations. In addition, they can use Benchmarking to show a prospective account how their current insurance program stacks up against the rest of the market. For risk managers, Advisen Benchmarking provides independent verification of market pricing so, for example, when senior management or the Board of Directors want to know what peer companies pay for coverage, Benchmarking provides the answers.
“Advisen Benchmarking has definitely changed the way we approach new and renewal business,” said Ron Adams, President at Hoffman-Henry Insurance Company. “Our investment in Advisen has certainly paid off because it enables us to justify recommendations for changes in retentions and increases in limits purchased. When I get a premium quote, I check it with Advisen Benchmarking, and when I do prospect presentations, I show Benchmarking as a component of our service presentation.”
Used in conjunction with Advisen’s Who Writes What Coverage Where function, Advisen delivers a powerful view of coverage alternatives. Given a set of programs that define a benchmark, Advisen can show which markets wrote that coverage, thereby giving the broker an easy syndication platform. For example, if a broker is not sure who writes Railroad Protective Liability or Public Officials Directors and Officers insurance, Advisen can show them which of the 530 markets in the program database wrote that specific cover for those specific types of accounts.
Advisen’s 500,000 insurance programs represent some 75,000 different companies. That means the Advisen Aggregate book of business enables brokers to compare an insurance program to any subset of the other 75,000 companies’ programs. The vast majority of this program data belongs to private companies and approximately 40 percent belongs to companies with revenues less than $50 million. All of this program data can also be sorted by industry, geography, inception date, and several other parameters.
“Advisen has grown the Benchmark data archive ten-fold during the almost three years that we’ve used the service,” said Dick Clarke, a Senior Vice President at J. Smith Lanier. “While our book of business is sizeable, Advisen’s collection is enormous and in an accessible database that’s always changing with the market. We look to Advisen to quickly determine if a client’s commercial program is rich or cheap relative to the marketplace and, for high level clients, we incorporate a section on Benchmarking in our presentations.”
“A half million programs is an impressive milestone, but not surprising given the rapid growth of our arsenal of data,” said Tom Ruggieri, CEO of Advisen. “Advisen has many clients who use benchmarking to supplement their knowledge about structuring insurance programs. Since the database is being continuously updated, it is nearly a real-time view of the constantly changing commercial insurance marketplace. I am grateful to our clients and very proud of our staff for this achievement.”
About Advisen
Advisen Ltd. provides carriers, brokers, risk managers and other insurance professionals with an integrated analytics and information platform for insight to make key commercial insurance and risk management decisions. Advisen’s over 400 clients access the on-demand, web-based service for research on half a million program transactions representing 75,000 companies, 375,000 claims, 80 industries, 1.7 million companies and organizations, and 36,000 commercial insurance professionals. Advisen member firms gain higher value on the above information through analytic functions such as: benchmarking, work-up and submission templates, insurance program management, policy & law comparisons, loss & exposure analysis, corporate governance, financial metrics, news and significant case data. Over 40,000 insurance professionals use Advisen every day. Visit www.advisen.com or call 212.897.4800.