Business Moves: Alacrity Services, Oriel Services, AIR Worldwide, CCC

Alacrity Services launched Resolve to directly connect homeowners to its network of pre-screened restoration and repair contractors. The announcement marks a first-time expansion for the company from its core commercial restoration services into the consumer-facing home services market.

Resolve leverages Alacrity Services’ 16 years of experience and history in the home repair and insurance restoration industry serving large national clients. Previously only available through Alacrity Services’ business-to-business relationships, Resolve and its network of contractors is now available directly to homeowners needing repairs and restoration.

As an independent service, Resolve represents a milestone in the home services sector by giving homeowners the peace of mind that comes with a tried and trusted contractor, free of charge. Similar lists have charged a fee to access detailed background information about approved contractors.

Contractors must pass a background check and are also thoroughly screened for business history and profile, financial stability, insurance coverages, background checks on principals, foremen, and onsite laborers, and licenses and certifications. Alacrity Services regularly monitors its approved vendors to ensure they maintain credentialing requirements.

A user can select up to three contractors to bid on their job using the online tool. Once a contractor is chosen, a Resolve project specialist assists the homeowner with their customized project timeline and serves as the homeowner’s single point of contact for customer service and issue resolution throughout the overall repair or restoration process.

Resolve’s network of contractors has been growing rapidly, and is therefore able to offer a wide variety of services. These include:

• General Contractor (Typical, Commercial)
• Specialty Contractors (Flooring, Drywall, Painting, HVAC, Roofing)
• Mitigation (Water, Fire, Biohazard)
• Emergency Services (Board Up, Roof Tarps)

All completed projects receive a three-year warranty on workmanship and a one-year warranty on materials.

Cunningham Lindsey, a global loss adjusting and claims management company, announced the expansion of Oriel Services in the US. The expansion will leverage the solid reputation of the Oriel brand in Australia and UK, and specifically build the Oriel Managed Repair services segment in the US. Leading the expansion of Oriel’s Managed Repair Services is Dan Cassara, president, and Patrick Phillips, executive vice president of Oriel Managed Repair.

Oriel assists insurers and property owners by serving as an independent third-party resource to control costs and reduce repair times through hands-on management of the process. Under the leadership of Cassara and Phillips, Oriel will expand the managed repair services across the US, and will be offered on both a standalone and as an additional service to Cunningham Lindsey’s diversified services platform of loss adjusting, forensic engineering, building consultancy, training and forensic accounting services.

Cassara brings more than 15 years’ experience in the claims industry, and has served in numerous executive management roles over the last 12 years, including CEO, COO and vice president of Sales and Marketing.

Phillips brings 16 years of experience in implementing strategic plans and utilizing technology to ensure organizations maximize efficiencies and maintain competitive advantage. Hehas served in several executive management roles, including most recently as chief information officer and chief technology officer for a leading disaster restoration company.

Catastrophe risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) announced that it has expanded the capabilities of its terrorism risk model to support scenario testing for the United States and 27 other select countries to help companies assess the impact of different attack scenarios on their portfolios and better manage their global terrorism risk. AIR Worldwide is a Verisk Analytics business.

AIR’s Touchstone platform enables users to conduct deterministic loss analyses, a method of terrorism risk assessment that estimates losses to property and workers’ compensation policies from defined attack scenarios. In Touchstone 4.0, released in June, AIR’s deterministic terrorism loss modeling capabilities have been expanded to include 27 countries in addition to the United States: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Users can select a property from within their own portfolio, one of the targets in AIR’s U.S. landmark database, or any user-identified target and then select a weapon type, such as a truck bomb, to test “what if” scenarios. AIR has developed robust damage functions to help companies understand the impact on their insured exposures given the size of the blast and urban density indices. The loss estimation functionality complements existing accumulations management capabilities within Touchstone, including dynamic ring analysis, for property and workers’ compensation exposures.

To estimate attack frequencies, the probabilistic AIR U.S. Terrorism Model incorporates newly updated and detailed operational threat assessments made by a team of counterterrorism experts with decades of experience working for the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, and other government bodies. And AIR has updated its comprehensive database of potential targets to include additional U.S. corporate headquarters, professional sports stadiums, prominent buildings, and hotels. The database of more than 64,000 targets includes approximately 100 “trophy” targets associated with a higher probability of attack.

AIR has also recently integrated terrorism risk index maps from sister company Verisk Maplecroft as a hazard layer into Touchstone. The indices provide an assessment of terrorism risk at a subnational level based on terrorism incident data and severity of attacks during a specific reporting period.

Probabilistic modeling capabilities are currently available in the Touchstone 4.0 and CATRADER Version 18 catastrophe risk management systems. The deterministic modeling solution for countries outside the United States is featured in Touchstone 4.0.

Together with its affiliated companies, CCC Information Services Inc., launched a new suite of telematics-enabled claims offerings that will improve and speed accident notification along with the steps and decisions undertaken by insurers after their policyholder has been in an accident.

Powered by the CCC DRIVE telematics platform, these offerings include electronic crash detection, automatically initiated first notice of loss (FNOL), and predictive solutions that will inform real-time decisions including vehicle repair versus replace, preferred method of inspection (based on carrier guidelines), and injury triage.

The telematics platform is capable of collecting driving data from any source – mobile, embedded or connected car. Upon impact, detailed information about the pre-accident driving behavior and the crash itself are instantly run through CCC’s predictive analytics engine, which is powered by the insights gleaned from millions of claims transactions, and more than 20 years of injury data, including thousands of human crash tests. An alert can automatically be sent from the vehicle to the insurance carrier’s FNOL representative, presenting the facts of the accident in map and dashboard formats, indicating the vehicle’s location, direction of travel prior to the accident, speed, braking and steering movements and impact severity.

In addition to crash notification, FNOL representatives can receive insights, derived from CCC’s predictive analytics, helping them determine whether the vehicle is likely to be repairable or totaled, the best appraisal option (using the carriers’ guidelines), if an injury is likely, and if emergency and/or tow services should be dispatched.