ALR, ISO Upgrade Theft Reporting System

By Caroline McDonald

NU Online News Service, Nov. 19, 9:34 a.m. EST? Art Loss Register and Insurance Services Office Inc. said an enhanced property-loss reporting system they have created should improve insurers' ability to recover stolen art objects and other high value items.

Insurers lose millions of dollars each year to property theft and all but a handful of items are never recovered, said New York-based ALR.

Up to now, insurance subscribers reporting art losses to the ALR encountered a cumbersome process. "We have struggled to find a way for them to easily pass us that information," said David Shillingford, marketing director for ALR. The company began its partnership with ISO about two years ago,

Mr. Shillingford said the report can be "quite complex" because of the amount and variety of information required, including the name of the artist, the type of art, its dimensions, and "all the things we need to identify that item when we're looking through an auction house catalogue."

ALR and ISO in partnership have been working with insurers through an "arts and antiques" box on their system that when checked would generate a report of the missing item which was sent to ALR, Mr. Shillingford said.

The system "was great, but all we got was the information ISO always gets, which is who the loss victim was and who the insurer is," he said. However, "we need to know if it was a painting or a sculpture, who made it, and what it looks like."

Mr. Shillingford noted, "the ALR has always been an obvious service for insurers specializing in fine art insurance but now insurers with broader property books can have items registered through the seamless reporting. The new reporting system also mitigates the need for extensive staff training."

An ALR member insurance company submitting a claim for stolen art and antiques via the ISO ClaimSearch platform will now be able to provide additional details about any unique item to the ALR without having to exit the ISO all-claims platform, he said. An ALR specialist will review the information and add it to the database.

That database is subject to searches daily by auction houses and law enforcement. "We do 300,000 searches a year," he said.

Mr. Shillingford said one of ALR's recent successes includes the recovery of a painting valued at $60,000 by artist Keith Haring, which was reported by an insurance company. The painting was discovered in an auction catalogue listing.

"We're just in the process of sending the insurance company a check" for the full amount, which the company had previously paid on the claim, he said.

Although named the Art Loss Register, the database has information on stolen items ranging from paintings and prints to porcelain and watches, he said. The ALR has registered more than 120,000 unique items?most with images?for insurers and policyholders since 1991.

The database is searched by ALR specialists, either for objects offered for sale or items that are the subject of a police investigation. Insurers and owners have recovered more than $100 million of property through ALR database searches.

Richard P. Boehning, senior vice president of ISO, said the system development enhances the value of the ISO ClaimSearch platform.

Special Reports /

ALR, ISO Upgrade Theft Reporting System

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