Insurance Services Office
Encyclopedia
Verisk Analytics
Verisk Analytics is an American financial services firm based in Jersey City, New Jersey, that provides information and analytical tools for mortgage and insurance companies, to better help them identify risks and standardize procedures...
, is a provider of data
Data
The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...
, underwriting
Underwriting
Underwriting refers to the process that a large financial service provider uses to assess the eligibility of a customer to receive their products . The name derives from the Lloyd's of London insurance market...
, risk management
Risk management
Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities...
and legal/regulatory services (with special focus on community fire-protection efforts and Building Code Effectiveness Evaluation) to property
Property insurance
Property insurance provides protection against most risks to property, such as fire, theft and some weather damage. This includes specialized forms of insurance such as fire insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, home insurance or boiler insurance. Property is insured in two main...
-casualty
Casualty insurance
Casualty insurance, often equated to liability insurance, is used to describe an area of insurance not directly concerned with life insurance, health insurance, or property insurance. It is mainly used to describe the liability coverage of an individual or organization's for negligent acts or...
insurers
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
and other clients. Headquartered in Jersey City
Jersey City, New Jersey
Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States.Part of the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City lies between the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay across from Lower Manhattan and the Hackensack River and Newark Bay...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, the organization serves clients with offices throughout the United States, along with international operations offices in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
.
Overview
Founded in 1971 in a merger of smaller underwriting service organizations, ISO has developed enormous databases of information about hundreds of millions of individual insurance policies, along with a large volume of public records pertaining to fraudFraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
, real property
Real property
In English Common Law, real property, real estate, realty, or immovable property is any subset of land that has been legally defined and the improvements to it made by human efforts: any buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, roads, various property rights, and so forth...
, employment screening, and motor vehicles. ISO also monitors regulatory standards and insurance laws, and makes many filings
Filing (legal)
In law, filing is the act of submitting a document to the clerk of a court for the court's immediate consideration, for storage in the court's files, or both. Courts will not consider motions unless an appropriate memorandum or brief is filed before the appropriate deadline...
and other communications with regulatory authorities on behalf of its clients.
ISO became a private, for-profit company in 1997. It is owned by its member insurers and employees, and it does not publish detailed financial statements
Financial statements
A financial statement is a formal record of the financial activities of a business, person, or other entity. In British English—including United Kingdom company law—a financial statement is often referred to as an account, although the term financial statement is also used, particularly by...
. In the fiscal year ended December, 2008 ISO's revenue
Revenue
In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover....
s were reportedly over $893.6 million. The organization employs 3,500 people worldwide, and the current chairman, president and CEO is Frank J. Coyne
Frank J. Coyne
Frank J. Coyne is Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Verisk Analytics and its subsidiary, Insurance Services Office .-Personal life:...
.
ISO owns many trademarks.
Services
ISO provides a number of risk-related services to its clients:- statistical, actuarial, and claimCause of actionIn the law, a cause of action is a set of facts sufficient to justify a right to sue to obtain money, property, or the enforcement of a right against another party. The term also refers to the legal theory upon which a plaintiff brings suit...
s data - development of standardized insurance policy language
- risk-management information about specific locations
- fraud identification
- marketingMarketingMarketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
, loss control, and premium auditAuditThe general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person, organization, system, process, enterprise, project or product. The term most commonly refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management, quality management, and energy conservation.- Accounting... - catastrophe modelingCatastrophe modelingCatastrophe modeling is the process of using computer-assisted calculations to estimate the losses that could be sustained due to a catastrophic event such as a hurricane or earthquake...
systems - employment screening
- rating and underwriting rules
- motor vehicle records
- litigation and regulatory support
- mortgage fraud analytics
- real estate
- healthcare cost analytics
- restoration and remodeling-estimation services and software
ISO's databases contain more than 11 billion detailed records relating to insurance and risk management, which form the basis for its information services. ISO employs many members of the Casualty Actuarial Society
Casualty Actuarial Society
The Casualty Actuarial Society is a professional society of actuaries whose goal is "the advancement of the body of knowledge of actuarial science applied to property, casualty, and similar risk exposures." Its members are mainly involved in the property and casualty areas of the actuarial...
and other insurance professionals to develop its risk-related products and services.