Fortis and BCIS in pricing tie-up

Fortis has appointed the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) to support the way in which its bedroom rated buildings policies are priced.

Although bedroom rated policies give a standard sum insured for all policyholders, an underlying or “Notional” rebuilding cost is still needed when setting premiums.

The BCIS Notional Rebuilding Cost Matrix contains 2.6m residential rebuilding cost values covering most houses, bungalows and flats and is the most comprehensive dataset of its kind.

Adam Clarke, underwriting director at Fortis said: “The BCIS data allows us to price bedroom rated policies with a greater degree of accuracy. This gives us an advantage over many of our competitors by enabling us to accurately assess risk and competitively price policies, protecting and growing our market share by providing a better deal for policyholders.”

Andrew Thompson, international development and data director at BCIS added: “We recognise that providing a comprehensive matrix of residential rebuilding cost values would enable insurers to competitively prices policies and increase their buildings insurance business whilst protecting their loss ratios by accurately assessing risk.

"BCIS has been consulting to the Association of British Insurers since 1978 and has recently developed its data set to provide a range of bespoke solutions specifically for the insurance industry. We are delighted to be providing our Matrix service to Fortis and look forward to supporting their continued success in this sector.”