From Shared Data to Shared Value: The Evolution of LexisNexis® Risk Solutions Contributory Databases

The Importance of Contributory Data

Within commercial insurance today, carriers can lack sufficient knowledge about an applicant’s prior insurance experience.  Each carrier has a wealth of information based on their individual interactions with the policyholder, but the current mechanisms to share that information can be slow and incomplete.  This can make risk assessment difficult and inefficient when a company is applying for insurance with a new carrier and risk signals are missed.

Contributory databases create a comprehensive pool of shared industry insights — helping carriers develop a more complete view of the policy and claims history of the applicant to better understand the risk. For almost four decades, LexisNexis® Risk Solutions has transformed contributed insurance data into trusted solutions that can efficiently provide valuable insights to help improve risk assessment when underwriting a policy. 

What Is a Contributory Database?

A contributory database is a collection of data provided by market members to a central repository that is shared exclusively among contributors. That contributory database then consolidates the data into a format that can easily be consumed by another carrier for permitted uses.

Access to the reports is limited to participating members and the value of the insights grow as participation expands. 

A Brief History of Innovation

LexisNexis® Risk Solutions has been developing contributory databases for nearly 40 years, starting with LexisNexis® C.L.U.E.® Auto in 1987 — the industry’s first personal auto claims history database.

We’ve since launched additional contributory solutions across multiple personal and commercial lines of business. These innovations have resulted from working closely with carriers to identify information gaps and new use cases.

Why Our Contributory Databases Are Different

Relentless focus on data quality

Each new contributor goes through an extensive quality assurance (QA) process to ensure all required data is complete, properly formatted and properly reflects the policy or claim information for that carrier. Every subsequent contribution goes through additional QA validation and monitoring to help ensure carriers continue to provide consistent and high-quality data.

Standardization and normalization

LexisNexis® Risk Solutions standardizes, normalizes, aggregates and links contributed data, providing a standard report format as output where all data fields in the report are in the same location and use the same definitions, eliminating the need to interpret carrier-specific submissions.

Fairness and completeness

Our contributory databases require all participating carriers to provide history of their policyholders. Depending on the specific database, this can include up to seven years of claim or policy history.  Requiring strict adherence to these rules creates a sense of fairness across all contributors while also helping to maintain a more robust dataset.  

LexisNexis® Current Carrier® Auto: A Case Study in Compounding Value

LexisNexis Current Carrier Auto was initially launched to help carriers just confirm proof that the applicants maintained prior personal auto insurance coverage. The contribution specifications, including additional policy details, have enabled LexisNexis Risk Solutions to expand to new use cases over time to help satisfy information gaps for the participating carriers.

For example, from a carrier’s policy contributions, LexisNexis Risk Solutions is able to provide:

• Monitoring of the in-force book of business for new violations and new drivers in the household
• Support for claims investigation and adjudication
• Management of required state reporting and lienholder notifications
• Prefilled data during quoting to simplify insurance shopping
• Market benchmarks and industry insight
• Support for claims investigation and adjudication
• Management of required state reporting and lienholder notifications
• Market benchmarks and industry insights

Why Should You Contribute?

Unique insights not available anywhere else

Combined data provides a view of claims and policy history not otherwise available, enabling more precise underwriting, pricing and risk segmentation.

Operational efficiency and automation

A centralized repository of standardized data can deliver information quickly in a way that integrates into existing workflows via standard APIs, helping reduce the time needed to collect and enter data about the prospective policyholder. 

Market intelligence and competitive advantage

With sufficient participation, a contributory database provides a broader view of market activity that can help carriers better understand trends and benchmark performance to support decision making and innovation. 

A Proven Track Record of Data Stewardship

Contributors to LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ contributory databases trust us to adhere to the contributory principles outlined in our agreements.  We are committed to allowing access only to those contributing carriers to ensure all carriers contribute equally, and to ensure that the data provided from the contributory databases is provided only for permittable use cases. 

One input. Amplified Insights

Contributory databases unlock valuable information about a risk that is otherwise unavailable outside of an individual carrier’s systems.  When contributing to LexisNexis® Current Carrier® Commercial, carriers can receive standardized risk-level and industry-level insights to help improve underwriting, renewal and monitoring, required reporting, and claims handling performance. 

Collectively, these solutions help carriers close critical market blind spots, make more confident decisions and help maximize the value of contributory data.