Business News: TrustLayer, Verisk and BuildFax, Arbitration Forums and GEICO

TrustLayer, a San Francisco-based insurtech startup, announced that it has formed a partnership with Building Partnerships to distribute a technology that verifies certificates of insurance and other business documents.

TrustLayer said the Builder Partnerships network has 1,400 member contractors who are projected to build 160,000 homes this year.

“Our platform protects businesses from costly claims by ensuring compliance requirements and that the policies are valid,” said Vincenzo Acinapura, chief technology officer of TrustLayer, in a press release.

TrustLayer said it chose construction and real estate development as its initial market for its document verification platform because of the amount of insurance fraud within the industry and the prevalence of manual processes to track insurance. The company said its software uses artificial intelligence to verify that documents are authentic and to ensure that all policies include all required coverages.

Builder Partnerships, based in Littleton, Colorado, provides business management services to residential contractors. Through the partnership, contractors are able to purchase TrustLayer at a discount, according to the company’s website.

“You don’t know you are in trouble until you are in trouble,” stated Builder Partnerships President Chuck Shinn. “You think you are collecting the right documents and that they’re current. All of the sudden you have an audit and you find out that some of your documents are for the wrong type of insurance or for expired policies; and you have an accident then find out you are not covered.”

Verisk announced that it has acquired BuildFax from its shareholders. The Austin, Texas-based analytics firm provides property condition and history data.

Verisk, a national analytics firm for the insurance industry based in Jersey City, New Jersey, said Buildfax will become part of its existing ISO property data analytics division. The data from BuildFax will enhance ISO’s property analytics while helping underwriters gain insight into changes in the buildings they insure, the company said.

“Property insurers have traditionally made underwriting decisions without important information about the condition of a building’s roof, electrical system, and plumbing,” said Neil Spector, president of ISO. “The data that BuildFax provides about building conditions is transforming property underwriting, both at inception and renewal.

Spector said ISO has been using BuildFax data for years as part of its Roof Age estimation tool.

BuildFax says on its website that it began building a database of property information at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, recognizing that the market lacked a reliable source of data to verify property information.

GEICO has signed on as the latest customer for Arbitration Forums Settlement Exchange System, which automates subrogation payments.

The Tampa, Florida-based organization said the SES product automatically makes electronic funds transfers and processes incoming subrogation and arbitration payments made electronically once a settlement is reached between parties.

SES has a payment aggregation option that allows netting of resolved claims among participants, reducing the number of payments between parties, the company said.

The SES product originated as an extension of Arbitration Forum’s E-Subro Hub platform. The company said Nationwide, Enterprise, and Allstate are actively using SES to exchange subrogation payments.

Founded in 1943, Arbitration Forums is a membership-driven, non-profit organization that serves the recovery and resolution needs of more than 5,000 members. Annually, its members file over 872,000 arbitration disputes and 1.8 million subrogation demands collectively worth over $13.5 billion in claims, the organization said.