Pricing/Product Management

Competitive Analysis - Personal Lines

A strong commercial lines company wanted to expand their personal lines writings in the Midwest. They wanted to have a competitive analysis system to track their competitors’ rates and review along with their latest rate change indications. Pinnacle developed a competitive analysis engine showing their competitive position including color-coded maps for a market basket of representative risks.

Product Management

One of our long-standing regional carriers had entered into a new market and asked for Pinnacle’s assistance in bringing their product and processes up-to-date. With Pinnacle’s product, pricing and product management expertise, we were able to provide a wide range of services to our client. Not only did we develop a new rating plan, we also drafted a completely new rate manual and rate pages. Pinnacle also reviewed their Underwriting guidelines and worked with the client to draft new guidelines consistent with the new rating plan and client risk appetite. Pinnacle followed the review through to reviewing system specifications, forms and competitive position and preparing the rate filings. In addition, Pinnacle was able to provide suggestions on customer notifications, agent notifications and ways to track the progress of the new program.

Territory / Summit Analysis

The insurer had not reviewed or adjusted their territorial boundaries in several years; and their current territories were not based upon an analysis of their underlying loss experience.

Pinnacle began with an evaluation of available insurer and external industry data at the ZIP code level as well as their current and future policy processing capabilities. After all of the experience data was adjusted to a common base level, we used our Summit® software product to smooth the data to develop an initial adjusted pure premium by ZIP code to reflect both experience in a ZIP code and in neighboring ZIP codes. The number of additional neighboring ZIP codes used was dependent upon attaining a sufficient exposure level.

The smoothed data was then clustered using Summit® on both a contiguous and non-contiguous basis. The insurer needed to decide whether to maintain relatively contiguous definitions or use more granular and theoretically accurate non-contiguous definitions. Using statistical measures, we identified and graphed optimal definition sets. Non-contiguous definitions were selected by the client. To minimize the number of territories with a limited geographic area or only a few ZIP codes, some manual combination of “outlying” ZIP codes with territories (clusters) with similar adjusted pure premiums was performed.

Finally, we assisted the insurer in developing the necessary filing support material to gain approval. The new program is generating new business in areas of historical profitability but previously less than average competiveness.