Homeownership has lengthy been synonymous with the American Dream. And it’s no surprise: proudly owning property permits you to customise the place you reside, construct stability, and, maybe most significantly, it provides you the chance to construct long-term wealth.
Homeownership, nonetheless, is just an act of wealth-building for so long as you’ll be able to afford to guard your private home in any situation. In any other case, the funding is a bet.
Sustainable homeownership requires danger literacy — deep information of disaster dangers, the various threats disasters pose to properties, and what might be completed to mitigate their impression. Danger literacy additionally entails an understanding of how insurance coverage works, disaster danger protection choices, and the monetary impacts and safety limitations of various insurance policies.
Danger literacy is the information foundation householders must safe really ample property insurance coverage. With out this knowhow, they’re extra prone to accept the minimal protection required by their mortgage corporations, with out understanding various or expanded protections.
Additionally, with danger insights and literacy, policyholders are extra apt to pursue correct dwelling mitigation measures that fortify their properties towards catastrophe (and doubtlessly decrease insurance coverage charges).
That is all essential to sustainable homeownership, and due to this fact, to the establishment of property insurance coverage.
The Finest Brokers of Danger Literacy
Insurers are properly positioned to provoke proactive home-owner danger training, with underwriters and danger managers having the most effective entry to disaster and hazard information.
Establishing your underwriting and danger administration capabilities to be extra collaborative with customer-facing roles is an efficient technique to set up a convention of selling danger literacy for policyholders early within the journey of homeownership.
Listed below are three easy steps insurers can take to start out selling danger literacy, with out overhauling operations.
- Construct communication channels between underwriting/hazard danger professionals and customer-facing groups
Spreading danger literacy begins with the insights you have already got — particularly from superior disaster danger fashions that regularly generate up to date details about completely different hazards and their potential for loss. For instance, the peril-specific and composite danger fashions out there from Cotality™ reveal the threats of flooding from rivers and lakes or present historic information on fires or damaging hail in any specified area. These insights are pertinent for policyholders as they think about the worth of upper priced, but extra complete insurance policies.
Underwriters and danger managers can share the deeper experience they glean with customer-facing groups, streamlining insights so salespeople can successfully talk danger data to purchasers.
When gross sales groups higher perceive evolving danger, they turn out to be empowered to each promote insurance policies and educate policyholders about potential catastrophes that might impression their houses — in addition to alternative ways to personalize their property insurance coverage protection accordingly.
With tailor-made danger literacy, insurance coverage sellers and brokers are extra outfitted to beat objections to increased price, but essential, protection.
To facilitate this data trade and uphold this new normal of communication, insurers can implement digital instruments that make cross-functional collaboration fast and handy.
Cotality’s industry-leading loss management administration system, UnderwritingCenter™, performs a key position in spreading danger literacy. This underwriting workflow automation system condenses property and danger insights into streamlined reviews, making it simpler to make these danger insights extra absorbable for customer-facing groups.
There’s a bonus to this set-up, too. Knowledge-driven collaboration can finally lengthen to networking with mortgage lenders. In sharing insights with lenders, insurers can get earlier entry to future policyholders, making it potential to ship danger literacy even earlier than potential homebuyers make main property-related choices.
- Lead advertising and marketing efforts with value-added messaging
The simplest technique to educate householders about insurance coverage earlier than they notice they don’t have sufficient is thru danger literacy-driven advertising and marketing content material.
Insurance coverage advertising and marketing groups can flip danger literacy insights from underwriting or danger administration into value-added messaging on completely different channels by means of completely different types: web site content material, thought management, e-mail campaigns, and social media posts.
Social media posts might present the proper discussion board for offering attention-grabbing details about danger, upsetting folks to consider their very own danger literacy.
Focused e-mail campaigns can ship related insights to householders in high-risk areas. The chances are limitless for danger literacy advertising and marketing, which invitations partaking conversations about customizing property insurance coverage accordingly.
The sooner policyholders are launched to danger literacy, the much less seemingly they’re to expertise sticker shock when making insurance coverage choices. When price is just not the only focus, clients are higher positioned to thoughtfully assess what protection finest helps their long-term objectives and capability for sustained homeownership.
Such a advertising and marketing content material supply additionally develops buyer belief. When protection is about extra than simply the price, clients might be extra happy and usually tend to stay policyholders.
- Automate underwriting processes in order that danger literacy doesn’t take a again seat
It’s troublesome to ask danger professionals to speak extra with different departments except extra administrative duties are taken off their plates. Thus, applied sciences that automate underwriting and claims workflows enhance these professionals’ bandwidth for spreading danger literacy.
Automating underwriting processes that don’t require human thoughtfulness provides professionals extra time to curate danger insights for different enterprise capabilities (see first level above).
Cotality’s UnderwritingCenter™ automates underwriting workflows by means of rule-based decision-making, figuring out property danger attributes in order that people can deal with extra advanced danger evaluation. With out extra tedious tasks on their shoulders, underwriters have extra capability to speak the not-so-obvious danger findings to buyer going through groups, who can then translate these insights to clients as danger literacy.
UnderwritingCenter™ additionally provides time again to underwriters by enabling digital inspections. By minimizing time spent on job websites, it preserves brainpower for extra strategic, artistic communication.
Increasing the insurance coverage mission to incorporate danger literacy
With the best sources and strategic sport plan, insurers can turn out to be dependable brokers of danger literacy. Danger information is energy, and is a should for constructing extra resilient, insurable communities all over the place.
The precedent set by insurers can have each large and long-lasting advantages. As soon as insurance coverage corporations maximize their alternatives for spreading danger literacy throughout insurance coverage workflows, the mortgage and actual property industries may quickly notice how vital it’s to introduce danger literacy earlier within the homebuying course of.
By means of danger literacy, insurers can take measured steps to preserving the American Dream of homeownership.
© 2025 Cotality. All rights reserved. Whereas all the content material and data is believed to be correct, it’s offered by Cotality “as is” with no assure, illustration, or guarantee, specific or implied, of any variety together with however not restricted to as to the merchantability, non-infringement of mental property rights, completeness, accuracy, applicability, or health, in reference to the content material or data or merchandise and Cotality assumes no duty or legal responsibility in any respect for the content material or data or merchandise or any reliance thereon. Cotality™, the Cotality emblem, Intelligence past bounds™, and UnderwritingCenter™ are the emblems of CoreLogic, Inc. d/b/a Cotality or its associates or subsidiaries.
Subjects
Disaster
Carriers
Householders