iClarify launches in BC

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SCM Risk Management Services partners with IBABC to allow brokers to test drive the residential property validation tool.

Suzanne Sharma on November 9, 2010

Greg McCutcheon, president of SCM Risk Management Services

iClarify was recently launched in BC, and more than 50 brokerages now have access to the residential property validation tool. This pilot launch will continue through 2010, and was established in part by SCM Risk Management Services and the Insurance Brokers Association of British Columbia (IBABC). A province-wide release is planned for early 2011.

The tool combines 14 critical construction data elements, geo-coded streetscape and satellite imagery and valuation services.

“Brokers benefit from an accurate, standardized quoting process that allows them to validate consumer reporting and property data online, and in real-time,” Greg McCutcheon, president of SCM Risk Management Services told Canadian Insurance Top Broker magazine on November 9.

iClarify was first tested in Ontario and received positive feedback, according to McCutcheon. Today more than 700 brokerages in Ontario use the tool.

“Brokers are excited to no longer ‘be in the dark’ throughout the quoting process,” said McCutcheon. “There has been great enthusiasm about the efficiencies driven by the service including time reduction, accuracy and a heightened customer experience.”

Quebec is next in line to get the tool. Preliminary pilot tests are underway with 27 select brokerages in Montreal, Quebec City and Laval.

iClarify is expected to be available to major city centres across Canada in the first half of 2011, and to the remainder of the country by year-end 2011.

“We’re looking forward to hearing what brokers have to say about it,” said Chuck Byrne, executive director at the IBABC.

The iClarify tool is also gaining increasing acceptance among insurers. At the recent IBAO conference in Niagara Falls, three of the five CEOs on the CEO panel (Maurice Tulloch of Aviva, Kevin McNeil of Gore Mutual and George Cooke of The Dominion) said their companies are now using iClarify data from brokers as part of quoting calculations, with Louis Gagnon of Intact acknowledging it was coming to his company soon.

“The way Aviva is using it right now is for new business,” said Aviva’s chief underwriting officer James Russell in an interview. “We’re accepting that as valid information to go into the calculator. As the tool gets more and more embedded in the industry, it’s really just going to grow.”