LOS ANGELES and McPherson, KS July 18, 2006 Marshall and Swift / Boeckh (MSB), the leading worldwide provider of building cost data and estimating technology to the property insurance industry, along with Farmers Alliance Insurance (Farmers Alliance) of McPherson, Kansas, announce a successful campaign of MSB’s Tele-Estimating Services™ (TES).
TES is a direct-to-consumer book of business management service provided by MSB that revalues existing policies by combining telephone and mail marketing techniques with advanced valuation technologies to generate faster, more accurate replacement values than are typically generated using other methodologies.
“We recognized several years ago that we had insurance-to-value (ITV) problems with our farm and home policies. We have been in business since 1888 and write in nine rural states,” says Bruce White, Vice President of Underwriting at Farmers Alliance. “Many of our policies were written years ago when construction costs were much lower. We didn’t have the resources to complete this task with our own staff and needed someone like MSB to help us achieve our ITV objectives.”
“We have used MSB products for ITV calculations on new business for years. When we looked at options to update our renewal business it was logical to use the same vendor that we had a history with and could trust. It was important to us that the vendor had a good reputation in the industry. We also wanted to use an ITV company that our agents knew. It was important that we used an organization that was recognized and had credibility with construction cost data,” says White.
“The MSB TES project has exceeded our expectations. We started the TES project in 2005 with one third of our business,” says White. “We were so happy with the results that we started our second year of the TES project two months early. Our plans are to complete our final one third of our business with the TES project in 2007. With the help of the MSB TES process our ITV problems will be a thing of the past.”
About Farmers Alliance Insurance
Farmers Alliance began in 1888 in the small, rural community of McPherson, Kansas. Started as a fire insurance company to share the mutual exposures of local farmers in the county, Farmers Alliance has grown to an organization that writes more than $135 million of premium across a nine-state region. Insurance products are oriented to a predominately rural market, and more than 50% of the total business is written in the farm insurance area. Personal and Commercial insurance products are offered as well. As a regional insurer, Farmers Alliance is represented by more than 650 Independent Insurance Agencies in the following states: Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.
Farmers Alliance Companies include three regional insurance companies providing property and casualty insurance for homes, autos, businesses and farms. The companies include Farmers Alliance Mutual Insurance Company (the parent company), Alliance Insurance Company, Inc. and Alliance Indemnity Company. The home office is located in McPherson, Kansas, and a claims service office in Denver, Colorado.
About MSB
Marshall & Swift / Boeckh (MSB), an MDA company, is the leading supplier of local building cost information, residential and commercial property valuation technology and services for the property and casualty insurance sector in the United States and Canada. MSB has five offices throughout the U.S. and Canada. For information, please contact Marsha Berenson, Media Coordinator, at 800-285-1288, Ext. 2828, MAILTO:[email protected], or visit MSB’s Web site at http://www.msbinfo.com.
About MDA
MDA provides advanced information solutions that capture and process vast amounts of data, produce essential information, and improve the decision making and operational performance of business and government organizations worldwide.
Focused on markets and customers with strong repeat business potential, MDA delivers a broad spectrum of earth and space based information solutions, ranging from complex operational systems, to tailored information services, to electronic information products.
MDA employs more than 2,700 people in locations across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The Company’s common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol TSX:MDA.
Tags: Farmers, Marshall & Swift / Boeckh (MSB)
