In the area of homeowners insurance, U.S. carriers spend about $190 million dollars a year on inspection programs to support risk management of new and renewal business. Yet many underwriters have difficulty quantifying the ROI of these programs. Those who can quantify inspection program results often find a negative or break-even ROI at best—although these programs are seen as a necessity of good underwriting.
As those who play the lottery say, "You can't win if you don't play." This perspective is akin to property underwriters who find that one property oozing with disrepair, prior damage, or egregiously misrepresented in the underwriting process is like winning the risk management lottery.
There's no denying the value of a high quality inspection on a questionable risk, but how can underwriters stack the deck and select more of those properties that need inspection? And how can a carrier determine if the condition hazards they look for are actually drivers of a meaningful amount of loss? In other words, we sometimes spend so much time and money looking for the needle in the haystack that we don't pause to ask if we've even found the right needle.
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