What other rating and underwriting factors are companies looking at, in addition to credit?
Chet Szczepanski: “We live in an incredible time with regard to computer technology and database technology . . . Next to the folks who work in the organization, probably the most valuable asset an insurance company has is its own data that the company needs to be slicing and dicing and examining in a zillion ways. . . . This is really the same kind of analysis that went into developing credit-based insurance scores, but there is more information in your database.” What kind of performance indicators are companies monitoring most closely today? Richard Zick: “One of the things I struggle with the most is retention. This is a tough economy today. If you’ve been writing a lot of contractors like we have been writing, they go out of business. If you’re writing restaurants, they don’t open sometimes, but they do close a lot. If you’re writing homeowners business, where you can’t afford to be stuck on homes that are being foreclosed on, it’s a very difficult situation. . . . Three or four y
