TransUnion announced the launch of Habitational Risk, a predictive analytics tool that helps carriers better assess the insurance risk based upon the occupants of commercial residential properties.
"Underwriting and pricing commercial residential properties is a challenge for many insurance carriers because there is a lack of reliable information and insights into the occupants’ risk of having an insurance loss," said Mark McElroy, executive vice president of TransUnion’s insurance business unit.
"TransUnion Habitational Risk provides much needed insight into the occupants of these properties in the underwriting process. This can have a significant impact on the commercial residential insurance market by improving risk selection."
The behavior and activities of occupants can often contribute to non-weather losses like fire and liability. Commercial residential property insurers have attempted to use loss control inspections as a means to try to assess this risk.
However, inspections can be costly and ineffective at measuring the insurance loss potential of occupants and leave underwriters with incomplete information on which to make underwriting and pricing decisions.
TransUnion’s patent pending address search technology identifies the occupants of a commercial habitational property. Once identified, TransUnion can then create a unique aggregated risk profile. The habitational report contains the following information that can help insurers improve pricing and reduce inaccuracies in the underwriting process:
Habitational risk score to help assess the insurance loss potential of occupants.
Two historical risk scores to assess how the property may have changed over time.
Average occupant age and age distribution.
Average occupant tenure and tenure distribution to measure overall occupant risk stability.