Marshall and Swift/Boeckh (MSB), a provider of building cost data and estimating technology to the property insurance industry, introduces MSB InterChange, an online database of property characteristics data. The database is updated continuously with data drawn from real-estate, financial, insurance, and remodeling activity across the United States. Agents and underwriters who have access to InterChange's insurance-ready data via MSB's home valuation applications gain greater efficiency and accuracy at the point of sale when creating preliminary insurance-to-value calculations, quoting, and binding homeowners coverage.

Peter M. Wells, president of MSB, explains the challenge of incorporating third-party building characteristics as part of calculating replacement cost values traditionally has been the questionable reliability of this information. MSB believes it is necessary to develop a viable scoring process as part of filtering information before that information is shared with insurers.

"Too often, ordinary public record data has been accepted with no consideration toward validation processes that allow better use of third-party input," says Wells. "Our InterChange initiative is not just to source any data but rather apply scoring metrics before insurance-ready building characteristic data is released."