How brokers can help clients navigate property valuation pitfalls
Secure optimal client coverage with realistic valuations from FM Affiliated for more effective risk management
Valuation plays an integral role in commercial property insurance. Yet values fluctuate due to factors including supply dynamics, environmental and climate risks, and inflationary pressure. How do you help clients navigate those waters?
Staying abreast of trends and best practice will help you provide accurate assessments, recommend appropriate coverage, and negotiate terms that ensure clients get solutions that are both comprehensive and cost-effective.
FM Affiliated provides a range of complimentary valuation services to help clients navigate market turbulence and ensure they always have the right level of coverage. Read on to discover how they could help your clients.
How we help clients get accurate property valuations
At FM Affiliated, we are commercial property valuation specialists. As part of FM, we lean on nearly 200 years of expertise in advanced risk engineering and assessment methodologies to serve our clients' needs.
Our consultants and independently licensed appraisers provide a suite of services to ensure clients have optimal coverage. These include:
- Office estimates – a high-level valuation estimate based purely on desk-based research using our own data and any external data provided.
- Property valuation – an appraisal that starts with a site visit and uses this to assess the client’s wider property portfolio.
- Field appraisal – a detailed and full site appraisal conducted by a third party to generate the most accurate estimates possible.
Whichever option a client selects, our data-driven and transparent approach improves values reporting and provides clarity around how the numbers are calculated for transparency and peace of mind.
When we discover undervalued premises, clients can amend policies and secure the coverage they need to ensure resilience. Where we find premises that have been overvalued, clients may be able to unlock lower premiums.
What our commercial property valuations mean for brokers
Making the most of our services can help you establish a reputation as a trusted insurance partner among your key accounts in three ways:
- Maximise coverage efficiency. Basing valuations on trend data becomes unreliable over time, and poor data or outdated records leads to unreliable valuations. Helping clients stay up to date will mitigate these risks.
- Deepen knowledge for better decision-making. Concepts such as "book value" or "replacement cost" are often misunderstood. We provide access to resources that improve your own expertise, ensure the right techniques are applied, and help you guide clients to the best decisions.
- Provide clarity and transparency. Our team uses clear processes and frameworks to ensure visibility over how valuations are calculated. We can also schedule portfolio reviews to arm you with insights to facilitate fluent and authoritative discussions with clients.
No other carrier can match FM Affiliated's in-house valuation expertise. By combining the latest valuation methods with our unique engineering-led, location-based approach, we can base our assessments on the reliable, first-party data required to evaluate the unique features of a given property or estate.
If you have a mid-market client you think could benefit from our unique property valuation expertise, we’d love to hear from you. Click here to submit a new business enquiry or contact a member of our team.
This is the sixth in a series of articles FM Affiliated is producing to help insurance brokers understand the value we can provide to their commercial property insurance clients. Look out for the next post, which takes a deep dive into the world of business interruption and supply chain disruption appraisals.