The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) received the 2016 Innovation Torchbearer Award from the Insurance Marketing & Communications Association.
IMCA’s annual Innovation Torchbearer Award recognizes individuals or organizations that have demonstrated innovative ideas or initiatives impacting the insurance industry.
IMCA selected IBHS for this honor as a result of its impactful scientific research to identify and promote the most effective ways to strengthen homes, businesses and communities against natural disasters and other causes of loss, said Mark Friedlander, IMCA board chair and head of corporate communications at The Main Street America Group.
“By putting building materials, construction and installation practices to the test, and identifying and effectively communicating answers to complex questions, IBHS effectively demonstrates how building safety research leads to real-world solutions, helping insurers and their policyholders mitigate against losses,” Friedlander said.
The IBHS, based in Tampa, Fla., is an independent, nonprofit, scientific research and communications organization supported solely by property insurers and reinsurers. IBHS conducts objective, scientific research to identify and promote the most effective ways to strengthen homes, businesses and communities against natural disasters and other causes of loss.
IBHS operates a state-of-the-art research center in Chester County, S.C. At the research center, which opened in 2010, IBHS:
- Conducts laboratory testing on one- and two-story residential and commercial buildings in conditions that mimic Mother Nature’s extreme weather events including hailstorms, windstorms, wind-driven rain, wildfires and fires.
- Gathers data to provide the building community with information to make structures safer, stronger and more durable.
- Provides the scientific community with a facility where they can generate scientific findings that led to real-world solutions and applications
- Executes field testing in U.S. Tornado Alley states each spring.
Other nominees for the 2016 IMCA Innovation Torchbearer Award were Allstate Business Insurance, John Hancock Insurance and The Co-operators.
Nominees were judged by a panel of IMCA board members and scored within three key areas of evaluation: Overall impact of innovation on a national or international level; impact of innovation on respective insurance industry segment; and degree of innovation deployed in executed creative strategy.
Past winners of the annual IMCA Innovation Torchbearer Award, initiated in 2012, include:
- 2012: USAA
- 2013: Esurance, An Allstate Company
- 2014: Swiss Re
- 2015: Insurance Information Institute (III)
IMCA is the oldest insurance marketing association in North America with roots tracing back to 1921. Membership includes international and domestic multi-line insurance companies and brokerage firms, regional and specialty companies, general agencies, and prominent industry suppliers.
Topics InsurTech
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