Xactware’s Pricing Research and Methodology

In order to provide you with the most accurate and defensible pricing information available, Xactware takes a unique, scientific approach to researching and reporting on market pricing for the insurance repair industry. This approach is based on a proven five-phased, iterative process.

• Phase 1: Conduct market pricing research.
  • Xactware currently researches and analyzes millions of market price points each year from multiple, third-party sources. These include:
    • thousands of in-field estimates that are submitted to Xactware every day (i.e. estimates actually used to settle claims)
    • market surveys of industry professionals
    • retail pricing research
    • unit-price research based on surveys with over 100,000 contractors, insurance carriers, and independent adjusters
    • pricing feedback from in-field users
    • independent pricing verification requests
    • customer-specific cost data
    • catastrophe-specific pricing research
    • additional research surveys
    • multiple third-party sources for data such as worker’s comp, federal taxes, state taxes, local taxes, and so on
    • many other research initiatives
• Phase 2: Review and verify all the market research gathered; conduct data integrity checks.
• Phase 3: Analyze all the pricing research and perform a proprietary cluster analysis on various subsets of that research to identify the mid-range market price points. This proprietary process was designed by Brigham Young University Ph.D.’s and is monitored by an econometrician. (An econometrician holds a master’s degree in statistics and a doctorate in economics.)
• Phase 4: Report on and publish market pricing research results.
• Phase 5: Evaluate and refine our pricing research and reporting methodology.

For example, the building cost data used in Xactware’s products comes from:

• Time and materials costs
  • Over 40,000 providers of materials, equipment and labor
  • Over 84,000 surveys each year*
• Analysis of actual damage repair estimates (transaction-based research)
  • Over 3 million estimates each year*
  • Over 6 million data points each month*
• Direct surveys of construction market costs
  • New construction/remodeling
  • General contracts and sub-contractors
  • Approximately 2,000 surveys each month*

*2009 values/averages

Xactware’s Position on Market Pricing

Xactware is an independent, third-party company that researches and reports on industry pricing. We use pricing information from general contractors, subcontractors, insurance carriers, insurance adjusters, and a host of other industry professionals as we research and report on the average market price for each price-list item. Xactware goes to great lengths to ensure that no one party or industry segment has any undue influence on the pricing data that we research and report on.