Cogitate is a Serious Contender in the MGA Core Systems Space

 

On September 7, 2023, Datos-Insights released its Property/Casualty MGA Core Systems: Overview and Solution Providers Report. This comprehensive report reviewed the relative capabilities of 27 digital insurance solutions and designated Cogitate’s DigitalEdge Insurance Platform as a Contender.

Datos-Insights defines the Contender as a solution having substantial customer experience and momentum, while the Established Player category is defined as in the market longer with more customer experience. Cogitate is a well positioned Contender with more MGA clients than 50% of those Established Players, and 100% retention since established in 2012. Momentum is an on-point description as Cogitate continues to innovate with new and existing customers and ecosystem partners to prepare MGAs for the future.

Cogitate excels across the differentiators highlighted in this report with a strong insurance underwriting platform, expansive ecosystem of pre-integrated data and solution partners, comprehensive quoting, billing, claims, Bordereaux management, agent and customer portals and so much more.

We thank Datos-Insights for including Cogitate in this report as we keep the momentum going and the client list growing!

 

Maui Fires: The Latest Spotlight on Cost to Rebuild in Inflationary Times

The recent wildfires in Maui, Hawaii – a profitable market for insurers and long considered low-risk – have been an eye-opener for insurers as the damages are assessed and rebuild anticipated. With damages estimated between $4-$6 billion, a number of factors, including Hawaii’s stringent regulations and longer construction permitting timelines, are predicted to contribute to the elevated reconstruction costs.  According to estimates from Verisk, a global insurance data analytics provider, construction costs in Hawaii are approximately 44% higher than those on the mainland with building material requirements such as pretreating all imported lumber for termites, contributing to increased costs. One can only hope insurance coverage accurately reflects the replacement value of the homes and commercial properties in Maui, which is not always the case.

With the rising cost of catastrophic events, accurate property replacement valuation has become paramount to the protection of policyholders and adequate pricing of policies. While policyholders may be shocked by increasing premiums associated with revaluations, current valuation of replacement costs is critical to keep pace with localized inflation, labor markets, and building codes. According to a recent CoreLogic report, reconstruction costs over a period of 5 years (Q1 2018 to Q2 2023) have increased by 33.5% in California alone. The 2022 Marshall fires in Colorado, underscore the impact of underinsurance, with 83% of damaged homes found to be underinsured – ranging from $99,000 to $240,000 per risk.

Faced with inflationary replacement costs, it is crucial for insurers to implement accurate underwriting tools and practices to generate reliable estimates that reflect the cost to rebuild or replace property improvements (personal /commercial) in the event of a loss, such as a fire or natural catastrophe.

In an illuminating conversation, Skip Coan, Senior Vice President of e2Value, sat down with Cogitate to discuss the evolving landscape of homeowners and commercial property insurance, and risks associated with undervaluation of replacement costs. Skip shed light on e2Value’s efforts to educate the industry and rectify this longstanding problem, “Test your book all the time, as often as you can, as effectively as you can. Run your book and run your renewals. Look for outliers and make adjustments. Everyone is afraid they’ll lose business if they raise rates. We’re just advising that you understand your gaps in value and begin to make adjustments before the losses impact your policyholders and your ratios.”

Cogitate’s pre-integration with data partners including e2Value, Confianza, Verisk, and HazardHub through the DigitalEdge Platform, ushers in a new era of underwriting efficiency by equipping underwriters with real-time, accurate property data. Sourcing and effectively utilizing property data independently is no small feat, even for large corporations. e2Value’s platform successfully converts non-uniform large datasets from public record data into meaningful insights in less than two seconds, with an accuracy rate of 90%. For insurers, the critical need to access an ecosystem of data providers from a unified platform is evident, as underwriters cannot afford to toggle between multiple systems for intelligence gathering.

The insights shared by Skip Coan highlight the urgency of addressing property undervaluation and the power of accurate property intelligence. As insurers harness the potential of digital technologies, they not only enhance their processes but also ensure that policyholders receive the protection they truly deserve. Click here to read more about the insightful interview and how Cogitate and our growing partner ecosystem are revolutionizing underwriting with data, automation, and advanced analytics. For more information on intelligent underwriting, read our new whitepaper, 3+ Keys to Proactive Underwriting.

 

Ecosystem Partner Profile: Confianza on Intelligence and Underwriting Auto Lines

 As research for the eBook, 3+ Keys to Proactive Underwriting, Cogitate’s team spent time with John Petricelli, Chief Data Officer of our ecosystem partner Confianza. Integrated with Cogitate’s DigitalEdge Platform, Confianza helps insurers accelerate digital transformation. One of their trending use cases is the identification and prevention of premium leakage and fraud. Confianza’s risk intelligence identifies key policyholder motivations and behaviors as well as scoring/flagging of submissions by risk appetite and selection criteria.

Combining over 50 accurate consent-compliant and non-FCRA data sources with submission data such as driver name, address, and birth date, Confianza’s proprietary risk modeling detects undisclosed drivers, false garaging, likelihood to exaggerate claims, prior vehicle damages, synthetic identities, and more.

At Confianza, John Petricelli has engineered the intelligence that produces a 360 view of your prospects and policyholders with underwriting quality, to make smart decisions for your company and offer your policyholders the best possible coverage. Our conversation is summarized to provide you with an overview of the how, what, and why of Confianza’s risk intelligence and the benefits brought to underwriting auto lines.

How vast is the database?

Confianza has been nicknamed by its clients as “the database of America.” The data includes every adult, every household, and every property in the US. With just a name, address, and date of birth, Confianza identifies all vehicles (VIN), members of the household, and much more. Confianza also maintains data on every business in the US and every commercial property, by type.

How does the risk modeling work?

The power of the data is in the proprietary engineering intelligence that interconnects and gives rise to real insights about people and their assets. For example, a very detailed utility that looks at addresses with 29 different conditions will trigger address exceptions, while some competing providers will not flag the error or omission which could lead to hidden, material risk indicators. Confianza will flag that submission as a failed lookup, signaling a requirement for corrective action.

The data intelligence will confirm the proper identity of the consumer presented, the territory, address, risk exposure, the asset – its current condition, use of the asset, details of the driver(s) presented – and uncover those not disclosed, rate variable integrity for all household drivers and share a motivation field, which indicates financial capability and the likelihood of purchase. The auto details also include full registry ownership, title status, and events. Confianza links this information to the people and households.  It also confirms that the current personal or business use of the vehicle matches the registered use.

All of these factors provide the transparency required to evaluate price risk based on a source of truth that fact-checks possible omissions, unintended errors, and concealment of information that can lead to losses.

The fight against premium leakage

The first step Confianza takes with many clients is to scan their book for premium leakage based on a very conservative model. Most often, discovery finds undisclosed drivers account for a minimum of 15% premium leakage. Non-standard auto can be upwards of 25%. On-going book monitoring is extremely important as Confianza has found at least 15% of policies have a material change before renewal, which may not be captured at renewal if reliant on the policyholder to disclose the change. This illustrates the importance of data validation at renewal as well as submission.

Streamlining the underwriting process

Integration of Confianza with Cogitate DigitalEdge Policy streamlines the underwriting process by providing a digital 360 view by flagging the high conversion leads, eliminating the early no-goes, and reducing the time discussing exception handling with agents from an average of 20 minutes to 2-3 minutes. Insurers can screen submissions against very specific underwriting criteria for early decisions, saving time and investment in additional data.  For example, if the model identifies a submission as a synthetic identity, the process stops before any additional data is called.

For more information on our technology ecosystem, visit our partner page here.

 

Originally published here: https://www.cogitate.us/resources/insurance-underwriting-software-risk-intelligence-ecosystem-auto-insurance/

Ecosystem Partner POV: e2Value on Property Intelligence and Underwriting

 

Skip Coan, SVP of e2Value joined Cogitate to discuss the recent economic trends impacting homeowners and commercial property insurance. Skip addressed the undervaluation of properties due to escalating replacement costs and how e2Value is working hard to educate the industry on rectifying this problem.

Cogitate’s DigitalEdge platform integrates with e2Value to place current, accurate property data at the fingertips of underwriters to easily evaluate property risks and calculate the replacement value of improvements– solving a historic problem for the insurance industry exacerbated by today’s inflationary conditions.

How big is the problem of undervaluation?

“Undervaluation has been a problem for decades – but now with rapidly rising building, labor, and shipping costs, the gap is widening dramatically, leaving an even greater risk of underinsurance. We urge insurers to run evaluations of their books often enough to clearly understand any gaps in coverage to allow property owners to make educated decisions about the level of protection they purchase.

As of April of 2023, we had run tens of millions of policy addresses through our data sets and on average found at least 50% underinsured based on current replacement values. In addition to inflationary impact, additions, alterations, and improvements to homes are unlikely to be reported to insurers. Without third-party data sources to identify material changes, these also contribute to underinsurance.

While the problem is industry-wide, we most often hear about this post-disaster when a state DOI study is conducted. These studies often reflect demand surge which can also exacerbate the problem in the short term. A perfect example is the Marshall fires of Colorado in 2022 where 83% of the damaged homes were found underinsured – ranging from $99,000 to $240,000 per risk.

When a catastrophe hits, if a property is underinsured, even a partial loss can become a total loss because the replacement cost often hits the policy limits.” 

Policyholders do not have readily available replacement cost indicators and are most often reliant on market values (Zillow or real estate assessments) to self-evaluate their coverage needs. This can lead to surprise, disappointment, and financial hardship when the policyholder becomes a claimant.

What type of data is necessary?

“Property intelligence that includes accurate, local material and labor costs, shipping costs, and current building codes are critical to the quoting process to properly price risks at the outset and eliminate this potential value gap from compounding year over year among your best, long-term customers. For commercial properties, access to building codes is particularly important, especially for large, older buildings. Our replacement cost for commercial properties will always reflect a commercially viable space based on local building code because, for example, the code may restrict you from replacing a brick and wood structure with anything other than steel and masonry.

Commercial property occupancy data is also critical to risk evaluation. Nearly 50% of the occupancy information insurers have on commercial properties is inaccurate. Depending on the usage, the risk can increase considerably, and changes go unnoticed unless the insights are available to identify those changes that occur post-underwriting. Finally, geographical details for all property types are essential to exacting distance from natural hazards such as coastal proximity.”

How hard is it to independently source and ingest property data?

“It’s a hard thing to do, even in very large companies. Data is not uniform, so you have to ingest it and convert it into useful insights. Our platform does that by converting public record data into meaningful values 90% of the time with just an address and we do it in less than 2 seconds. For insurers, accessing an ecosystem of providers from a single platform is critical. Underwriters can’t work effectively accessing multiple systems for intelligence gathering.”

Are there other benefits to these insights?

“Our customers have shared that in the current market, the conversations with reinsurers are difficult. When they tell the reinsurers that they work with e2Value, test and run their books often and monitor cost differentials, it helps those conversations considerably. We spend a considerable time with the London markets and they’ve expressed frustration with the US market valuations. They want the right data, the right values, and more importantly, they’re holding the US markets accountable for it.”

Any final advice for insurers?

“Test your book all the time, as often as you can, as effectively as you can. Run your book and run your renewals. Look for outliers and make adjustments. Everyone is afraid they’ll lose business if they raise rates. We’re just advising that you understand your gaps in value and begin to make adjustments before the losses impact your policyholders and your ratios.”

Powered by data-driven and digital automation technologies Cogitate DigitalEdge Policy brings transformational efficiencies to the traditional underwriting process. To learn how Cogitate can help your underwriting team contact us today!

 

Originally published here: https://www.cogitate.us/resources/ecosystem-partner-pov-e2value-on-property-intelligence-and-underwriting/

 

How Cogitate helped an insurance company overcome their challenges

 

Cogitate was the result of insurance veterans joining hands with tech experts, making them perfect for insurance companies that are looking to automate or digitize their services. We are leaders in accelerated digital insurance for wholesale brokers, MGAs, and carriers. In this blog, we will cover one of our clients, Southern General Insurance Company (SGIC), their challenges, and how our team overcame those challenges and improved their results. Let’s take a deeper dive into all of the details of this incredible journey.

About Southern General Insurance Company (SGIC)

Through MGA  Wholesale Insurance Broker and Insurance House, Southern General Insurance Company (SGIC), a provider of property and casualty insurance, offers independent agents personal lines insurance products. Coverage is sold in Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina , Tennessee , Virginia , and Washington D.C.

Challenges faced by SGIC

SGIC faced slippage in the identification of attorney demand letters, and adjusters overlooked a number of cases that resulted in claims of bad faith. Their team also claimed that managing responses and keeping track of conversations with the claimants' solicitors proved to be challenging tasks.

The manual approach that they had been using was time-consuming, expensive, and prone to errors, and the danger of bad-faith exposures to SGIC was always substantial. In certain cases, these problems resulted in litigation with hefty defense and settlement costs. To automate the demand letter detection and monitoring process, SGIC chose Cogitate DemandAssist.

How we helped SGIC

One of the major factors that helped SGIC gain our trust was our understanding of insurance. After going through all the challenges they were facing using their previous methods, we instilled four features that could help them overcome all the challenges. Here is the list of those features:

1. OCR and text mining of documents from ImageRight (SGIC’s document management system)
2. AI and machine learning for high-precision pattern identification of attorney demand letters
3. Automated, integrated notification service to alert the adjuster team of demand letters and response deadlines for zero slippage.
4. Track negotiation details with attorneys, such as offer amounts and the dates presented.

All these features helped them successfully navigate through their challenges and get the desired results.

Results

These were the results that SGIC obtained after our input:

1. 99.20% demand identification accuracy from their previous 64.36%.
2. $2.4 million in demands identified (monthly average).
3. A massive 48% reduction in demand handling cycle time
4. New demand identification is down from 5 days to less than 24 hours.
5. 15,000+ pages of accelerated identification processed daily.

Conclusion

Our partnership with SGIC was an exciting project that turned out to be a massive success. "We have opted for Cogitate DigitalEdge for its future-ready digital insurance platform capabilities coupled with the wide range of state-of-the-art features," said Diane Boyer, Vice President of Operations at Southern General Insurance Company. You can visit our website to contact us or learn more about our services.

 

Cogitate: Revolutionizing the Insurance Landscape since the Last Decade

 

Insurance sector faces numerous challenges that can affect its growth and effectiveness. One such difficulty is the complicated and time-consuming underwriting and claims assessment procedure, which is frequently prone to delays and errors. But these challenges can be overcome with the use of technology.

We at Cogitate believe that the future belongs to those who can embrace technology to drive operational excellence in the constantly evolving insurance industry. With the help of our cutting-edge digital technologies, we strive to simplify insurance services. Our digital insurance software is expertly designed to empower insurance providers by integrating all facets of their business processes. Our technology completely transforms how the insurance industry operates, from policy management and claims processing to client engagement.

At the heart of our range of services lies the Insurance Agent Portal, a dynamic gateway that transforms how insurance professionals communicate with customers and policies. The agility and effectiveness of insurance agents are improved by this user-friendly portal's real-time access to crucial customer information, policy data, and underwriting tools. Additionally, by orchestrating the whole insurance lifecycle and using data-driven insights to improve customer experiences, our digital insurance platform optimizes business operations.

First Tier Underwriters Selects Cogitate

We are happy and proud to announce that First Tier Underwriters, a Georgia-based specialty insurance wholesaler, has chosen us to replace its proprietary policy system, help digitize and streamline its new business, underwriting, and policy administration processes, and enable future growth and scale. While the proprietary policy system has its own sets of advantages, there are some challenges with the system. Some of them include time consuming processes, lack of expertise and expensive software development. We aim to overcome those changes with the tools at our disposal.

Ty McGinty, President of First Tier Underwriter, talked about their future plans and their decision to work with us. He explained FTU's goal to replace their proprietary system with the out-of-the-box offering of DigitalEdge Policy and secure this long-term partnership. He also added "The value proposition allows us to establish our base functionality today, with the option to address greater operational needs as we expand".

Tushar Bhole, Executive Vice President of Sales and Partnerships at Cogitate, also shared his excitement about working with FTU. He stated, "This is a great example of the launch of out-of-the-box capabilities to hit the ground running with expanded functionality over time in a manner that meets FTU’s ROI requirements."

About Cogitate’s Digital Edge Policy

Insurance companies, MGAs, wholesalers, and program managers may update their operations using Cogitate's DigitalEdge Policy to improve their efficiency, accelerate time to market, and quickly respond to changing consumer demands. By linking with core and legacy systems, it speeds up the digitalization of insurance and offers the advantages of third-party data interfaces.

DigitalEdge Policy improves the channel partner and customer experience by providing a variety of insurance technologies, like digital sales and service infrastructure, integrated mobile apps, chatbots, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics.

For instance, an insurance business can use DigitalEdge Policy to cut the time it takes to develop new products by almost 50%. This would also allow them to quickly provide a variety of unique coverage options to the market, giving them a competitive advantage and boosting client satisfaction.

Additional products by Cogitate

DigitalEdge Billing: DigitalEdge Billing allows end-to-end billing lifecycle management for both personal and business lines with a scalable design for your current and future needs. It enables increased agility and responsiveness in a continually changing industry and develops customer expectations through real-time information processing and a user-friendly interface.

DigitalEdge Claims: Cogitate DigitalEdge Claims, with its comprehensive, innovative, and highly flexible solutions, adds value to businesses by reducing claim response time and providing superior experiences for your customers. Furthermore, it streamlines claims processing through the use of a variety of modern technology, resulting in lower expenses and leaks as well as increased productivity and efficiency.

If you are an Insurance company that is looking to take the next step and embrace technology, you can contact us. We have worked with numerous insurance companies including Southern General Insurance Company, Preferred Mutual Insurance Company, Rothert Insurance and more. Visit our website to learn more about our services.

 

Treaty Oak selects Cogitate’s MGA core platform to increase speed-to-market and accelerate market share growth in commercial transportation insurance

Atlanta, Georgia, December 15, 2022 Treaty Oak General Agency will adopt Cogitate DigitalEdge, a cloud-native policy and distribution platform, the company's fast-growing roster of MGA clients, according to an announcement made today by Cogitate, a pioneer in property and casualty insurance technology. Cogitate's DigitalEdge insurance platform solutions platform is designed to provide MGAs, Carriers, and Program Administrators with the highest level of flexibility, enabling them to easily expand into new markets, broaden their product offerings, and provide a smooth and intuitive client and agent experience.

We knew we had found a team that comprehends the insurance industry and its issues from the moment we spoke with Cogitate. With the help of this partnership, we will be able to improve our relationships with insurers, broaden our distribution, make use of a sizable pool of third-party data and microservices for underwriting and customer experience, and offer new products like auto liability, physical damage, general liability, and cargo insurance quickly and simply. Geoffrey Crater, President of Treaty Oak General Agency, said, "We are thrilled to have found the proper technology partner to accelerate our speed to market and provide more operational savings.

"Moving to Cogitate's automated workflow and modernized rater will enable agents to process applications 5–6 times more quickly, solidifying us as the go–to MGA. According to Dani Harris, COO of Treaty Oak General Agency, "the technology also enables us to quickly join new markets by effortlessly managing regulations, rates, and forms through the platform's built-in low-code no-code configuration studio."

"Treaty Oak is an innovative and forward-thinking MGA that appreciates the necessity of implementing a flexible and modern solution with the proper technology partner who brings with it decades of insurance operations experience," stated Arvind Kaushal, CEO & Co-Founder, Cogitate. We anticipate playing a significant role in Treaty Oaks' rapid expansion and ongoing success.

Incorporating more than 30 third-party data providers and carrier integrations, Cogitate's pre-integrated digital insurance ecosystem "enables our customers with data pre-fills for better risk selection during the submission process and ensures a complete digital engagement throughout the binding process and beyond." Jacqueline Schaendorf, a Cogitate co-founder, stated.

Cogitate offers native integration with its numerous apps, namely AIM and ImageRight, which are a part of Treaty Oak's current technological environment, as an Orange Partner of Vertafore. The seamless data flow increases operational effectiveness, lowers costs, and sets the stage for future expansion and scalability.

With regards to Treaty Oak General Agency

A creative and quickly expanding MGA with a Texas base that specialises in Commercial Auto and Cargo Insurance is called Treaty Oak General Agency, LLC. The business offers a wealth of tools, resources, and expertise in commercial transportation to offer its agents and clients the finest coverage at a competitive price. Visit www.treatyoakga.com for more information on Treaty Oak General Agency.

About Cogitate Technology Solutions®

Cogitate Technology Solutions, Inc. delivers the most innovative digital insurance platform & technology and ecosystem of third-party micro-services to insurers, MGAs, brokers, and agents. The company’s highly configurable and automated DigitalEdge platform creates unparalleled speed-to-market and accelerated growth with effortless implementation, no matter the complexity or ingenuity of the insurance product or business model.Cogitate is a trusted technology partner serving clients throughout the insurance value chain and maintains 100% client retention since it was established in 2015.

For more information about Cogitate, please visit www.cogitate.us