JERSEY CITY, N.J., Nov. 4, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) announced today that it has completed its filing of the ISO Risk Analyzer® Personal Auto Symbols for physical damage in 47 states, and has received approval in 26 states. The filing activity is complete in all states where Verisk's ISO subsidiary has a filed personal auto program, except for Michigan and Virginia, where ISO anticipates filing shortly.
The new ISO Risk Analyzer Personal Auto Symbols introduce the use of predictive analytics based on vehicle characteristics statistically related to insurance loss. ISO produces its new Symbols using the ISO Risk Analyzer Personal Auto Vehicle Module for Physical Damage, a powerful analytic tool that uses vehicle characteristics to predict collision and comprehensive losses at a highly refined level. The filings introduce an alternative rating rule that insurers can license and adopt. Insurers can use the ISO Risk Analyzer Personal Auto Symbols directly as ISO filed them for all model years or for select model years only.
"These filings will pave the way for companies to use the insights from our work in predictive analytics," says Scott Stephenson, president of Verisk Analytics. "The filing of ISO Risk Analyzer Personal Auto Symbols provides a basis for regulators to examine and approve the results of our modeling efforts. Insurers can then rapidly adopt the new Symbols based on our filings. Other insurers using our modeling results to enhance their own proprietary efforts will benefit from knowing that our products have passed regulatory scrutiny."
In addition to producing the powerful new Symbols, the ISO Risk Analyzer Personal Auto Vehicle Module for Physical Damage provides analytical output insurers can use as a basis for enhancing their own vehicle-level modeling and analysis. The vehicle module provides output in the form of components developed as a function of the vehicle characteristics related to losses. Distilled from the hundreds of variables ISO examined, the components are in essence super variables that serve as powerful predictors for each coverage. The relevant components are available by coverage separately for frequency and severity.
"We're pleased to make available the power of our predictive analytics research to insurers as both a turnkey solution in the form of Symbols and as a tool for the development of independent rating systems in the form of components," said David Cummings, vice president and chief actuary for ISO Innovative Analytics. "As with all the products in our ISO Risk Analyzer suite, this demonstrates our awareness of the need for ISO products to fulfill many different levels of insurer needs in today's competitive insurance marketplace."
About ISO
Since 1971, ISO has been a leading source of information about property/casualty insurance risk. For a broad spectrum of commercial and personal lines of insurance, the company provides statistical, actuarial, underwriting, and claims information; policy language; information about specific locations; fraud-identification tools; and technical services. ISO serves insurers, reinsurers, agents and brokers, insurance regulators, risk managers, and other participants in the property/casualty insurance marketplace. ISO is a member of the Verisk Insurance Solutions group at Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK). For more information, visit www.iso.com and www.verisk.com.
About Verisk Analytics
Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) is a leading provider of information about risk to professionals in insurance, healthcare, mortgage, government, and risk management. Using advanced technologies to collect and analyze billions of records, Verisk Analytics draws on vast industry expertise and unique proprietary data sets to provide predictive analytics and decision-support solutions in fraud prevention, actuarial science, insurance coverages, fire protection, catastrophe and weather risk, data management, and many other fields. In the United States and around the world, Verisk Analytics helps customers protect people, property, and financial assets. For more information, visit www.verisk.com.
The Verisk Analytics logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=6694