Fuse, an AI-powered commercial insurance intelligence platform, has launched the contractor and construction verticals, which the company said extends its always-on data infrastructure to key construction-related insurance areas.
Fuse describes its platform as providing continuously updated intelligence covering general liability, workers’ compensation, builder’s risk, surety, professional liability and contamination, using multiple real-time data streams to generate insights for commercial brokers.
The company said the timing of the rollout reflects a confluence of what it sees as several different market pressures affecting contractors, particularly in Texas.
In the past 90 days, juries have issued three separate verdicts of more than $10 million against construction industry defendants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to Fuse.
Fuse said this litigation activity is affecting sentiment among insurance companies, noting that the State Compensation Insurance Council has highlighted the category, while Fuse believes workers’ compensation carriers are becoming more selective in underwriting electrical contractors in the area.
The company also pointed to rising construction costs as a parallel development. The company reports that based on its assessment, rising lumber and steel prices have caused some builders’ risk policies – originally developed based on early cost assumptions – to be inconsistent with current project valuations.
At the same time, Fuse said OSHA has stepped up enforcement activities in major construction markets, leading to increased risks to contractors through pre-renewal experience modification factors.
Fuse emphasized that these advances typically exist in separate data sets and are not typically analyzed together. The company noted that litigation outcomes are not reflected in SERFF filings, workers’ compensation category trends are not related to commodity pricing, and regulatory enforcement records do not reflect insurers’ underwriting responses. Fuse said its platform brings these sources together, allowing it to identify connections and provide what it describes as account-specific intelligence and recommended actions.
At launch, Fuse reported a number of active signals within the contractor and construction industry, including rate increases and underwriting adjustments across multiple insurance carriers and lines of business. Fuse said the industry achieved an Internal Signal score of 87 out of 100, which is defined as a high level of market activity that requires immediate attention from brokers, in part due to litigation trends in the Dallas-Fort Worth construction market.
Fuse explained that its platform continuously processes data from sources such as rate and form filings, workers’ compensation category trends, commodity futures for materials such as lumber, steel and copper, labor and workplace safety statistics, regulatory enforcement records, insurer preference data and third-party litigation tracking.
The system, which operates as an ongoing infrastructure rather than static reporting, identifies the intersection of multiple factors and uses these as practical considerations for brokers ahead of renewal discussions, the company said.
Fuse said the contractor and construction verticals are designed to highlight situations where different pressures coexist, such as litigation trends affecting underwriting behavior, material cost inflation affecting underwriting adequacy and regulatory activity changing risk exposures. These combined signals are translated into specific guidance designed to support broker-client conversations, Fuse said.
Fuse confirmed this is its second industry-focused vertical, following the launch of agricultural products earlier this year. Additional industry verticals covering transport, residential and reinsurance are currently being developed, the company added.
“Texas contractor brokers fielding renewal calls this week are dealing with three separate market forces, and no one system can show them all at once,” said Sean Bourgeois, founder and CEO of Fuse. “The WC market is changing with ruling trends in the construction category. Builders’ risk limits are out of date due to material inflation. OSHA enforcement has increased in the same areas. Fuse The intelligence was built to connect these three things into a single operation – before the quote arrived, before the customer made the request. “I was surprised before the competition got there first. “
He continued: “Brokers have access to some of these sources. No one has the infrastructure to continuously watch all of these sources, find patterns, and tell you what to do on a specific account this week. That’s the gap that Fuse fills. Contractor brokers who use it don’t deliver bad news to clients. They deliver solutions before the market does.”
