Torrent is a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh—the world’s leading insurance broker and risk adviser. With about 40,000 colleagues operating in more than 130 countries, Marsh serves commercial and individual clients with data driven risk solutions and advisory services. Marsh is a business of Marsh McLennan (NYSE: MMC), the world’s leading professional services firm in the areas of risk, strategy and people. With annual revenue over $18 billion, Marsh McLennan helps clients navigate an increasingly dynamic and complex environment through four market-leading businesses: Marsh, Guy Carpenter, Mercer and Oliver Wyman. For more information, visit mmc.com, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter or subscribe to BRINK.
Some common and not so common questions asked about Torrent and its flood solutions.
About Torrent
Torrent was founded and received its Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approval in 2005. In 2006, Torrent started serving clients. Today, Torrent is the largest flood vendor in the market and has a nearly 100% client retention rate.
Torrent's executive management team has over 200 years of combined flood insurance experience and each of Torrent's colleagues average five years of NFIP experience. All Torrent underwriters and Customer Care Representatives have their Associate of National Flood Insurance (ANFI) certification or are in the process of getting their ANFI certification.
There are many factors to point to, but probably the two most important are:
- Torrent's focus on providing unique and unsurpassed service to its clients;
- Torrent's devotion to using proven, flexible, and continuously improved technologies to automate the flood insurance industry.
Torrent knows that to operate successful flood programs, each client needs to differentiate its flood business from every other company's flood business through service, since the product and pricing are the same for all NFIP participants. Torrent's adaptable solutions allow clients to operate the way they prefer, versus forcing them into a standard, cookie-cutter method of providing flood insurance. Torrent also has a deep commitment to continual improvement and reinvestment into technology. As passionate experts and innovators in flood, Torrent team members work systematically to do whatever they can to make selling and servicing flood policies and claims easier and more accurate.
Technology
The TorrentFlood® system runs entirely on servers, is 100% web-based, 100% real-time, and runs in the cloud. Torrent has no mainframe and we have no backend processing. Printing is done overnight for transactions processed in real-time throughout the day, allowing the prompt processing and service levels possible for Torrent clients.
Torrent currently services clients of all sizes, from under $1 million in premium to hundreds of millions in premium. Being cloud-based, Torrent's system is easily and highly scalable, allowing an increase in processing capacity in a matter of minutes. The Torrent system automated many processes and transactions which means fewer colleagues are required to process policies and claims when other compared to other vendors and systems. It’s more efficient. Far fewer colleagues are required to process policies and claims when compared to other vendors and systems.
With Risk Rating 2.0 (RR 2.0) first time renewals and all new business going forward, agents are required to gather new underwriting information from insureds for every single flood insurance policy. This takes valuable time. Agents will be able to leverage auto-population from a number of data fields required to rate the NFIP under RR 2.0. This functionality will be available for both new business quoting and renewals. The flood insurance processing platform will access data from third party vendors to populate the many fields in the application. Auto-population saves agents time and supports more accurate, consistent flood insurance applications.
With Torrent's intuitive compliance technology, the flood application is going through the underwriting process with every question or entry that is made. A very low error rate is experienced by the agent and the company, saving time and also improving the agent confidence in the TorrentFlood platform flood quoting and issuance.
With Torrent, we only ask questions relative to the specific property address being rated. This improves the speed and effectiveness of the application and policy issue completion.
Results and Impact
All Torrent clients have experienced above-average growth of their books of business. Torrent's intuitive compliance + auto-population makes writing flood insurance easier. Coupled with Torrent's outstanding customer service and support, agents will discover that writing flood insurance is far less complicated than it used to be.
In both Sandy and Hurricane Irene, policies underwritten and issued by Torrent clients experienced a policy reformation rate of less than 3%. (Reformation is the process of re-underwriting and reissuing a policy so that it properly reflects the risk being insured, which is necessary before the claim can be paid.) The industry average for both events was in excess of 50%, as compared to Torrent’s less than 3%! All Torrent-processed Sandy claims were 80% closed within 60 days of initial notice, far higher than the industry average. Efficient claims handling is key to customer satisfaction, and Torrent strives to deliver the absolute best service levels possible.
Torrent leveraged claims technology. Flood adjusting companies used by Torrent and their clients are integrated with the Torrent system. In addition, Torrent has several examination firms under contract so during a catastrophic event such as Sandy and Harvey, claims examination capacities can be instantly and exponentially expanded to meet increased demand. By sharing claims information in real-time, remote users are able to examine and process claims as though they were in a Torrent home office. Companies and their agents can monitor claims performance real time, all the time, from their own computer. With Torrent, data flows more rapidly and accurately for fast claims processing.