Data Cleansing and Enhancement Services
Improve your modelled results with quality exposure data
Cleansing and improving exposure data for import to catastrophe models is an essential yet time-consuming component of the risk modelling process, which has important implications for risk selection, pricing, and overall risk management as a dimension of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) accountability.
Inaccurate and incomplete data contributed between 20-45% of the gap between modelled and actual losses during the major events of the 2005 hurricane season (Best’s Review, 2008). Identified as the No. 1 concern by a recent Ernst and Young survey of chief underwriting offices, data quality is coming under increasing scrutiny from rating agencies, amidst growing recognition that improvements can alter modelled results by a factor of four for a single building, or up to 25%, across a portfolio.
Re/insurers failing to address data quality issues face penalties such as premium surcharges and unfavorable rating assessments. However, investment in improvement measures delivers commercial advantage through improved pricing, discounted reinsurance premiums and enhanced credibility with rating agencies and investors. eCityRisk risk is a trusted independent provider of impartial data cleansing, enhancement and quality reporting, whose services are objective and unbiased by the sensitivities of any one model.
Solving ‘completeness’ and ‘accuracy’ issues
eCityRisk offers a new brand of advanced data cleaning and enhancement, founded on more than a decade of R&D by parent company ImageCat into methods of reducing uncertainty in exposure data. We employ qualitative and quantitative processing stages, combining heuristic data mining, expert oversight and checking by a member of our data services team, with advanced processing algorithms and a distributed network of databases.
eCityRisk’s data improvement service uses a five-step process to assess the ‘completeness’ and ‘accuracy’ of exposure data, suggest intelligent values for replacing incomplete or inaccurate fields, and deliver a data quality report targeted to help meet rating agency requirements.
eCityRisk’s exposure data cleansing, enhancement and reporting process:
Step 1: Formatting and Advanced Data profiling Using an advanced profiling tool, eCityRisk analysts cross check the validity of portfolio entries against trusted third party data records. Data profiling identifies typos, outliers, null values, and targets high exposure sites, and properties in very high risk areas. eCityRisk’s data profiling tool includes processes for:
- Flagging unlikely data
- Better geocoding of policies
- Verification of high-value and high risk structures
- Profiling the diversity of your portfolio
- Identify policy clusters, where you might be vulnerable to single events
Step 2: Accuracy checks Using a suite of more than 50 decision rules, inconsistent combinations of attributes are identified, such as structure type and height, square footage and value. An evaluation of suspicious data trends is completed, based on expert and scientific rules and judgement.
Step 3: Completing entries eCityRisk is a data intermediary. We utilise industry standard data sources, recognised third party datasets, and proprietary inventory databases developed by parent company ImageCat to suggest values for filling in incomplete fields such as occupancy, structural type, date of construction, and height.
Step 4: Intelligent replacements When independent sources are not available, an intelligent value is suggested using a combination of empirically-based data models and expert knowledge. You decide whether to accept or reject suggestions from step 3 and step 4.
Step 5: Data quality reports An exposure data quality report (click here to download sample report)1 is produced that measures the completeness and accuracy of the portfolio records. The report targets catastrophe-related data quality questions included in AM Best’s supplemental questionnaire, and ERM accountability requirements.
Our exposure improvement service currently works with industry standard UNICEDE format, which can easily be reformatted for the catastrophe model(s) of your choice. Our services span property portfolios for the US, Europe, and other selected international insurance markets. Please contact eCityRisk for further information on the service plans available.
