As risk managers strive to maintain effective and competitively-priced insurance programs, Marsh today unveiled the leading real-time, on-demand industry benchmark reporting service available to clients and prospects.

Available through Marsh's Global Benchmarking Portal, the new service provides clients with real-time benchmarking analytics on purchasing and pricing trends in the United States for approximately 20 major industry groups, as well as cross-industry reports on property, casualty, and financial and professional lines. Marsh’s Global Benchmarking Portal contains information on 90,000 policies, covering $50 billion in premium placements, $4 trillion in limits, and $15.5 trillion in total insured value (TIV).

"To effectively manage risk in today's ever-changing environment, risk managers need to make data-driven decisions, based on timely and relevant data," said Dean Klisura, Marsh’s U.S. Risk Practices Leader. "With the introduction of real-time, on-demand industry reports, Marsh continues to provide our clients and prospects with the industry’s best information and analysis, enabling them to optimize their risk management and insurance programs."

Using up-to-the-minute data, Marsh's colleagues can instantaneously provide clients and prospects, in every industry and coverage line, with real-time reports on historical rate changes, shifts in limits and retentions, levels of limits and retentions bought, and pricing in relation to exposure. Marsh’s database offers unmatched detail on peer groups' insurance purchasing habits, and depth of product reports. Peer groups are selected based on a variety of criteria including sales, number of employees, industry, location, ownership type, market value, asset size, or TIV. Clients and prospects can also request reports on their peers based on Fortune Magazine rankings, such as Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 company groups.

A variety of techniques are used by Marsh's benchmarking team to protect sensitive and confidential client information. Portal reports are based on a minimum of 10 peers, ensuring clients a level of anonymity. Fortune reports are similarly stripped of variables such as industry, rankings, revenues, market cap, assets and employee count, and manual production of custom reports is handled exclusively by the benchmarking team.

Marsh's benchmarking capabilities are delivered via Marsh Business Analytics^SM, which offers financial and risk management professionals a range of analytics services, including actuarial and statistical analysis, financial analysis, scenario testing, and decision modelling and optimization.