Utica First Insurance Company
Reduce and optimize property inspections
How Utica First reduced their average inspection budget by 42% using the Betterview platform.
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About Utica First
Since 1903, Utica First Insurance Company has been a highly trusted, reliable provider of property & casualty insurance across nine states. The majority of the company’s business is in commercial lines. They provide coverage to approximately 30% of restaurants and small contractors in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York. In addition, Utica First has a growing personal lines business in several Northeastern states – which has raised some new challenges for them they sought to address using Betterview.
The challenge
Inaccuracies & Inefficiencies
Inspection efficiency
Utica First was spending more than their competitors on inspections, but the results were not always accurate, timely, or actionable. “Sending an on-the-ground inspection team was taking 30 days or more,” says Shawn Kain, SVP at UF. “It was a tedious, inefficient process that was negatively impacting our combined ratio.”
Claims accuracy
Due to an uptick in severe weather events, along with insufficient visibility, the company was facing inefficiencies in its claims handling process. “We would receive a claim for a roof that lost 20 shingles in a rainstorm,” said Shawn Kain. “But the roof was already missing 100 shingles, and we end up having to replace the whole thing.”
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The solutions
Optimizing inspection efficiency
Utica First underwriters reduced their number of physical inspections – and improved efficiency for inspections that were still required – using the tools and property data on the Beterview platform.
- Bulk processing generates rapid, detailed reports for every property in their book.
- The Roof Spotlight Index (RSI), our 100-point roof score, spotlights the most relevant risk drivers such as missing shingles, staining, and ponding.
- Customizable flagging engine empowers underwriters to set their own business rules, prioritize properties that need the most attention, and straight-through process solid risks.
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Mitigating fraudulent claims
In the past, Utica First lacked sufficient visibility to respond immediately to claims. As a result, inaccurate and fraudulent claims snuck through their systems. This problem was solved by delivering historical, granular imagery prior to first notice of loss (FNOL) which showed not just current property condition, but how condition had changed over time.
“We had a claim for missing shingles on a roof, but Betterview showed that those shingles had already been missing before the loss,” said Shawn Kain. “That’s a potential claim avoided right out the gate, all thanks to Betterview.”
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Increasing underwriting efficiency
Partner Connect is the only property intelligence solution for insurers to integrate relevant third-party geospatial data from industry-trusted providers directly into their policy workflows.
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Business impact
Lower costs & faster inspections
Together, Utica First and Betterview:
- Cut costs and maximized efficiency for property inspections. Average inspection time has gone from over a month to just 30 seconds on average.
- Streamlined underwriting processes. Average inspection costs have been cut by 77% per location, and the total inspection budget over 5 years is reduced by 42%.
- Improved detection and mitigation of fraudulent claims. Historical imagery and computer vision detections identify true property damage prior to FNOL, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars from inaccurate or fraudulent claims.
Betterview is the property intelligence and risk management platform for P&C insurance. Optimize pricing, quoting, underwriting, renewals, and claims by applying AI and computer vision to high-resolution aerial imagery. Betterview helps you write more profitable business, reduce expenses, and mitigate risk.
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