Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan Adopts Verisk’s LOCATION Platform to Deliver Address-Level Fire Protection Data

August 25, 2020 / 3 min read

LANSING, MI, and JERSEY CITY, NJ, August 25, 2020 – Verisk (Nasdaq:VRSK), a leading data analytics provider, and Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan (Farm Bureau Insurance), announced today that Farm Bureau Insurance will adopt Verisk’s LOCATION® platform to maximize its use of Public Protection Classification (PPC®) for precise, address-level measurement of the strength of fire protection for insured properties.

Farm Bureau Insurance will use LOCATION, which can deliver address-level information on a variety of risks, to drive PPC’s fire protection grading deeper into its underwriting workflow. The PPC program provides grades to communities across the United States based on their fire prevention and suppression systems.

“In conjunction with our digital transformation initiative to streamline our underwriting operations, we analyzed how we could move beyond manual entry of fire protection data at point of sale to capture this critical risk factor with greater precision,” said Dawn Elzinga, Vice President of Underwriting and Actuarial at Farm Bureau Insurance. “It’s an opportunity to achieve more accurate pricing for our customers and stronger underwriting performance throughout our property portfolio. We turned to Verisk to deliver this data.”

Granular information applied to underwriting and rating decisions can materially affect loss experience—and, ultimately, profitability. A property’s PPC code is based on a thorough grading of a community’s firefighting capabilities and mitigation efforts—and the location of that property relative to responding fire stations and adequate water resources.

“This unique proprietary measurement has been and continues to be the industry gold standard for measuring this type of risk,” said Doug Caccese, president of ISO Personal Lines. “When we looked at modeled versus actual experience, our analysis found PPC to be nine times more powerful at predicting future fire loss than distance to nearest fire station alone. With LOCATION, we can help companies of all sizes enhance their usage of PPC as part of their journey toward increasing digitization.”

PPC’s level of granularity reflects Verisk’s continual monitoring of robust data sources and use of digitized files and state-of-the-art geographic information system (GIS) technology—all backed by decades-long, community-level relationships with the fire service and local authorities. And with delivery via application programming interface (API), implementation is flexible.

About Verisk
Verisk (Nasdaq:VRSK) provides predictive analytics and decision-support solutions to customers in the insurance, energy and specialized markets, and financial services industries. More than 70 percent of the FORTUNE 100 relies on the company’s advanced technologies to manage risks, make better decisions and improve operating efficiency. The company’s analytic solutions address insurance underwriting and claims, fraud, regulatory compliance, natural resources, catastrophes, economic forecasting, geopolitical risks, as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the company continues to make the world better, safer and stronger, and fosters an inclusive and diverse culture where all team members feel they belong. With more than 100 offices in nearly 35 countries, Verisk consistently earns certification by Great Place to Work. For more: Verisk.com, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

About Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan
Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan was founded in 1949 by Michigan farmers who wanted an insurance company that worked as hard as they did. Those values still guide the company today and are a big reason why we are known as Michigan’s Insurance Company, dedicated to protecting the farms, families, and businesses of this great state. Farm Bureau Insurance agents across Michigan provide a full range of insurance services—life, home, auto, farm, business, retirement, Lake Estate®, and more—protecting Michigan residents with more than 660,000 insurance policies statewide. For more information about Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan: FarmBureauInsurance.com.

Media Contact:
Brett Garrison
Edelman (for Verisk)
917-639-4903
Brett.Garrison@edelman.com