Equifax Insurance Services & Fair, Isaac Introduce Casualty Loss Score

ATLANTA, March 27, 1996 -- Automobile insurance underwriters can accept more applicants, renew more policies, streamline operations and reduce loss ratio with Casualty Loss Score (CLS), a new insurance score sold by Equifax Insurance Services and developed by Fair, Isaac and Company, Inc.

CLS predicts automobile insurance loss ratios so underwriters and agents can more quickly and accurately write and renew policies. The new product follows the 1993 introduction of Property Loss Score (PLS), the first score developed for insurers.

"The use of modeling and scores can improve the consistency and fairness of insurance underwriting," said Wendell Larson, Fair, Isaac Director of Marketing, Insurance Division. There is a proven correlation between claim risk and an individual's financial stability and economic behavior. Scores provide underwriters with a consistent, singular interpretation of the many variables and provide a fair and objective way to consider financial information in the underwriting process."

CLS is expected to help insurers improve their operational efficiency by speeding up the processing of lower-risk applicants, freeing time for evaluating higher-risk applicants. The product will be available both on-line and in batch mode.

"Based on the success of Property Loss Score, we expect the insurance industry to be very receptive to CLS," said John Wilson, Senior Project Director of Equifax Insurance Services, the country's leading provider of information services to the insurance industry. Combined with other underwriting tools such as Equifax's motor vehicle reports and loss histories reports (C.L.U.E.), CLS can play a vital role in helping underwriters make better risk-based decisions."

CLS was built from a diverse sample of more than 900,000 policies. Data was provided by insurance companies that sell nationally and regionally, through independent agents and via direct channels. The Casualty Loss Score actually is constructed as five separate models: two for preferred; two for standard, and one for non-standard. Preferred and standard models are further segmented by minimum liability limits and above-minimum liability limits. Using these segmented models, underwriters can rank-orde r applicants and policyholders and set appropriate actions to increase the number of policies issued and renewed and improve profitability.

Fair, Isaac has helped businesses turn data into actionable information to aid in strategic decision-making since 1956, and introduced predictive modeling to the insurance industry in 1987. Fair, Isaac has offices throughout the U.S. and Europe as well as in Canada, Mexico, South Africa and Japan and today offers a full spectrum of data analysis capabilities and delivers predictive models, software and consulting to insurers, financial services companies, retailers, direct marketers, and utilities worldw ide.

Equifax Inc. (NYSE: EFX), committed to Information Leadership for the Information Age, is a leading global provider of information services that help insure lives and property, grant credit, authorize and process credit card and check transactions and control healthcare costs. The Atlanta-based company was established in 1899 and now employs 14,000 people throughout North and South America, the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Revenues for the 12 months ended Dec. 31, 1995, exceeded $1.6 billion.

For more information on CLS or PLS, contact Fair, Isaac, at (800) 999-2955 or Equifax at (800) 765-8031. For consumer questions or problems, please call the Equifax Consumer Center at 1-800-456-6004.