View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2004/01/27/36093.htm
New York Central Mutual (NYCM) has selected the ISO’s “HomeValue” ™ to estimate residential replacement values in order to write insurance policies that accurately reflect the real costs of rebuilding a house.
“ISO HomeValue, which was developed by ISO’s subsidiary AIR Worldwide, is an innovative component-based property valuation system that enables NYCM and its almost 1,000 agents to generate replacement values instantly via the Internet,” said an ISO bulletin. “With minimal user input ISO HomeValue is automatically populated with specific information about individual properties to generate an estimate. This capability will make NYCM’s underwriting process more efficient, saving the company and its agents time and money.”
“ISO HomeValue is a welcome addition to our suite of underwriting applications. NYCM was glad to see other companies enter the property valuation market that had previously been dominated by just one or two companies,” stated Kathy Bell, vice president of underwriting at NYCM, the largest regional carrier in New York state. “We are very pleased with the ISO/AIR offering and the excellent service we have received from them. With their help it just took one day to integrate ISO HomeValue securely into the policy administration system used by all of our agents.”
ISO HomeValue uses a highly detailed database of key building features for more than 50 million residential properties in the U.S. It incorporates the location, size, age, number of stories, construction materials, and exterior and interior finishes, among other considerations, to determine the replacement cost of a property. The estimates are “based on thousands of individual component costs, including costs of materials, labor and equipment,” compiled from multiple public and private sources at both the national and regional levels.
“Before developing ISO HomeValue, ISO and AIR sat down with a number of insurers to determine what features in an insurance-to-value product would most improve their underwriting processes,” George Davis, AIR actuarial consultant, indicated. “A Web-based product that is easy to use was high on the list of insurer requests. ISO HomeValue is so intuitive it requires virtually no formal training, enabling an easy transition from legacy products.”