Advocate Technologies Community

Getting started

What is the goal of Advocate’s Community?We are committed to providing an easy way for you to find the best resources and connect with industry professionals in real-time. Our Community Platform is a hub of knowledge, expertise and collaboration that will help you develop your insurance skills and strategies.A (really) quick tourThe basic setup of our community is simple: Getting Started(You’re here now!) New to the community? New to our Company? Visit me first!Blogs & ArticlesHousing Thought Leadership articles and insightful content on current market situations, deep diving into issues and interesting topics surrounding insurance and compliance. Freddie Mac - Fannie Mac Waiver Support Need to submit a waiver for your insurance coverage? Here we provide support and guide you to submit a waiver and increase your probability of getting it approved! EventsThis is where you can keep track of all our upcoming educational webinars and events! Q&AAsk the community (or us) anything about insurance, Advocate products or any other related questions you have on your mind… the community is here to answer all of them efficiently and effectively.

Waiver

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are among the nation’s largest home loan lenders, and in order for a borrower to obtain a Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae guaranteed loan, they must obtain insurance that meets specific requirements set forth by the Lender. However, meeting these insurance requirements sometimes proves very difficult for borrowers. When a borrower is unable to meet one of these requirements, a waiver is needed. We at Advocate know that submitting an Insurance Waiver to Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae can present several challenges, and we understand how complex and daunting the process can be. This is why we created a team of insurance experts who have years of experience in writing and submitting Waivers to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. These experts are here to help you through the process of writing your own waivers and answer any questions you might have along the way. We will help you navigate Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s waiver submission process while ensuring all forms are filled out correctly and contain the necessary information. At Advocate Technologies, we want to make this process as easy and stress-free as possible. We have a talented team of experts with years of experience in Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s requirements so you can be sure that your Waiver is in safe hands. Let us help you on your Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae Waiver journey—view our Waiver Support forum HERE!

Thought Leadership

What do lemons and used cars get you? For, Joseph E. Stiglitz and George A. Akerlof, a Nobel prize in economics. But, with Advocate, much better pricing on insurance policies for borrowers, which means more business for lenders. Property insurance is not getting cheaper. In fact, there has been a lot of talk around big insurance companies trying their best to increase premiums in response to soaring inflation. And when they aren’t able to do that, mostly due to state regulation, they are reconsidering their business in entire states. Where does that leave lenders? Sitting on the curbside watching the sun go down on new and old business waiting for a Hail Mary. Sounds gloomy, doesn’t it? It certainly is gloomy if you are on the phone with multiple borrowers every day listening to them talk about how finding cheaper options, if at all, when insuring their next property or renewing an existing one is getting difficult by the day. Before we talk about what you could do instead, let’s explore the factors which affect insurance premiums and the ability of insurers to offer coverage. Reasons for expensive insurance Insurance broadly is split up into two main segments. The provider side, which is the insurer, and the insured side, which is the borrower. Climate change has caused problems on both sides of the spectrum. Greater frequency and higher average damage from hurricanes, floods, and wildfires have made things so bad that a healthy number of insurers have filed for bankruptcy protection during the past few years. On the other hand, rising costs of materials, labor, and other factors related to property repair and replacement have contributed to higher insurance premiums. As inflation affects the overall economy, insurers find it challenging to maintain affordable coverage levels leaving them no choice but to increase their prices. Insurers often rely on reinsurance to spread the risk associated with large claims. However, reinsurance costs can increase when there's a surge in claims from catastrophic events. These increased costs can be passed on to policyholders, resulting in higher insurance premiums. With no end in sight for the Fed constantly raising key interest rates, investors have other lucrative options such as treasury bills rather than investing in insurance derivatives. Additionally, and for the same reason, for reinsurers to keep funding new insurance policies, the cost of capital is being directly affected. The prevalence of insurance fraud and the cost of legal disputes has also greatly contributed to higher insurance costs. Litigation surrounding property claims, liability cases, and disputes over coverage terms can lead to increased expenses for insurers, which can be reflected in higher premiums for policyholders. Although some state governments, such as Florida’s, have passed sweeping legislation to reduce such occurrences, other states, like California, lag so far behind that insurers have started leaving them entirely. What we’ve covered so far is factually correct. However, the US insurance market for properties suffers from the lemon problem that is often used to best explain informational asymmetry in markets. Essentially, it occurs when the amount, quality, or level of access to information available to buyers and sellers is not the same. This causes either party an unfair advantage over the other resulting in opaque pricing for goods and services. Advocate has built its platform from the ground up to tackle this specific problem and in turn promises to equip buyers of insurance products with up to date, real-time pricing data. By helping borrowers find better deals on insurance policies, lenders can work easier and faster with borrowers when requiring them to comply with certain insurance requirements which normally add several thousands in premiums. Let’s see how we do it. Advocate's data Being a market leading insurance consultant, Advocate processes more than: 1,363 policies on a monthly basis from clients from more than 41 states for properties located in over 727 zip codes Insured by 189 carriers. This handling allows us access to an unparalleled pool of raw insurance policy data. Each policy that gets processed through Advocate goes through a structured dissemination activity which produces more than 50 data points per policy of which the major ones include the premium, dwelling limit, carrier name, and property zip codes. Our existing platform offers lenders access to this database in the form of pricing benchmarks for high, low, and average figures. Advocate’s analysis Our research and analysis have consistently showed that cheaper insurance options are almost always available and the age-old broker phrase “You won’t find it cheaper!” no longer holds much merit. To put things differently, you couldn’t buy a car with today’s certainty in pricing 30 years ago due to the absence of price comparison tools like autotrader.com. Imagine the extent of informational asymmetry during that time when you had next to nothing to compare the pricing to. Fast forward to today and we have hundreds of thousands to pay in insurance premiums and we have nothing like autotrader, at least not yet. But it’s nearly there. Our database allows us to map pricing trends by zip code, city, state, carrier, broker, property type, policy type and several other factors enabling us to share these insights with lenders who may be having issues getting their borrowers to purchase additional insurance in order to become or stay compliant. How our clients benefit If you have questions like the following, Advocate can help answer them today. What’s the average benchmark price for a multi-family property valued at $12,000,000 in the Florida panhandle? How much more expensive, on average, is insuring a condo complex in upper Manhattan as compared to Long Island? Which brokers are offering insurance for old age care facility complexes in the San Francisco Bay Area? Advocate offers answers to these questions because it has real time access to up to date information based off of policies that property owners have acquired as recent as last month. An example of the dataset we have is given below in the form of the average pricing offered by carrier to insure $1,000 in property value. Closing comments The US insurance market no longer needs to experience informational asymmetry and lenders need not experience a drop in business simply because their borrowers can’t find better insurance deals. Advocate is determined to deliver on its promise of price transparency. Talk to one of our agents today and experience sitting in the best seat at the negotiating table knowing fully well that your borrowers have access to much cheaper insurance. Check out our Waiver Templates Ask any question here View our upcoming Webinars and Events