Extra Space Storage Enhances Strategic Insights and Carrier Engagement with Archipelago

Extra Space Storage, a publicly traded real estate investment trust, invests in self-storage facilities and manages over 3,800 stores across 43 states. It is the largest owner and manager of self-storage units in the United States.

To support its rapidly expanding business, Extra Space Storage revamped its insurance strategy to align with the size and scale of its growing portfolio of properties, including implementing two towers of insurance coverage and expanding the panel of insurers participating in its programs. To power the new insurance strategy, Extra Space Storage knew it needed a more proactive risk data management capability, and implemented Archipelago to make this happen. 

The Data Challenge

To secure sufficient and cost-effective coverage in today's insurance market, top buyers like Extra Space Storage and their brokers strive to provide insurance underwriters with complete and accurate data about their properties. Before Archipelago, it was a persistent challenge for Extra Space Storage to manually manage and maintain their Statement of Values (SOV) using spreadsheets and documents.

The Extra Space Storage portfolio involves thousands of properties and is very dynamic, with a wide range of acquisitions, divestitures, maintenance, and capital improvements throughout each policy year.  Not only was it cumbersome and time-consuming for the risk management team to stay on top of the SOV using spreadsheets, they were always chasing the inevitable gaps in the detail, quality, and completeness of the key property information their brokers and underwriters needed to place their insurance.  

The Archipelago Solution

Led by Kacey Kalian, VP of Risk Management, Extra Space's risk management team implemented Archipelago's SOV Manager™ and Property Hub™, AI-powered software, to revamp the data and the data management, collaboration, and reporting workflows.  Kacey describes the implementation and use of Archipelago as one of the easiest they have ever experienced. 

The business impacts have been rapid, and significant, across three dimensions

1. Efficiently transformed the completeness and accuracy of the SOV data

• Transformed a time-consuming manual process with Archipelago’s AI-powered SOV Manager.  
• Powered a 10X improvement in the scope and quality of property data while at the same time enabling the Extra Space risk management team to increase their focus on supporting the rapid growth of the overall portfolio without adding any additional staff.
• Automated the uploading and extracted verifiable critical data from almost 1,500 documents, including valuation reports, property condition assessment reports, and roof maintenance reports.
• The property SOV is now 99% complete for primary COPE data, and 80% of previously owned properties in high-hazard zones are now coded with secondary modifiers.   

2. Improved engagement from insurance underwriters

• During the most recent renewal, Extra Space’s SOV data was accessed by 106 insurance underwriters across 55 markets accessed on Archipelago’s platform.
• This access provided underwriters interactive reporting on risk drivers and exposure changes to the Extra Space portfolio, including the impact of acquisitions and divestitures, and downloads of verified model-ready files to streamline underwriters' internal processes.

3. Proactive analytic insights and reporting on the portfolio

• Extra Space also uses Archipelago’s Property Hub to generate timely and collaborative analytics to track progress toward data improvement objectives and set priorities for the team.
• This also includes management reporting on exposure and risk drivers by Brand, insurance program, and region. 
• Extra Space is now also using Archipelago to generate catastrophe modeling metrics from a market-leading cat model. This includes reporting on the property-specific drivers of the overall portfolio’s risk to inform more proactive risk management and premium allocation strategies.