BuildFax Teams With Equifax to Deliver Property History Data to Insurance Sector

BuildFax, a commercial and residential permitting database in the United States, has joined forces with Equifax Inc. to provide property & casualty insurance carriers a view of underwriting risks while uncovering changes to their portfolio since policy inception. Equifax customers will have access to BuildFax’s data assets, which include property history information representing 60 percent of the nation’s building permit volume. Through this relationship, insurance carriers have the ability to develop better pricing strategies and reduce the potential for fraud.

BuildFax aggregates, analyzes, delivers and maintains a data set that provides transparency into a property’s hidden details. The company’s product provides access to information on property improvements and valuation increases, which would be unknown or unrecognized otherwise. This information also includes risk factors such as aging roofs and other major system indicators.

This data provides insurance carriers access to property history information delivered through a single source and eliminates the need to sift through volumes of disparate court data, which can often result in inaccuracies during the data collection and analysis process. Insurance carriers can use the data to more accurately price home insurance for both new business opportunities and renewals.
The BuildFax system uses secure cloud technology to enable access to its data assets. With this, insurance carriers can incorporate building permit data into their business decisions and more accurately identify over-valuations, under-valuations and everything in-between.