At State Farm’s Technological Research and Innovation Lab [TRAIL], researchers are not only working on how to best protect policy holders, but also how they can help create the best products in housing materials.
At TRAIL, researchers work on different “perils,” as in weather perils that pose a risk to those with State Farm insurance like housing and auto policies. In all, they cover wind, earthquake, hail and water as the prime weather events that can significantly damage a home.
Each peril is put to the test by a research analyst. Doug Dewey is the senior research analyst covering hail. Dewey said the research he and others conduct on weather perils is utilized to improve State Farm’s policies.
“For this work, we did initial testing, we helped design the premium credit program back in the '90s and so we implemented that program as a result of this research work,” he said. “So, we leverage the research for the program and then pass the savings onto the policy holder.”
Dewey referred to their testing standards of housing materials that are used to see how items like impact resistant roofing would hold up in a hailstorm. It involves repeated and realistic testing of the sample roofs, and the manufacturers of housing materials must pass those standards to have what is considered impact-resistant roofing.
Dewey recognized that much of the research work at TRAIL is driven by recent events, like recent hailstorms in Illinois. However, he said State Farm continually works to make better materials for homeowners regardless of current weather.
“As far as State Farm’s approach with roofing, we were very proactive in that space, because we knew we needed to do something different with the materials and work with manufacturers to develop test standards to have benchmarks for people to be able to make choices for better products,” Dewey said.
There also is an element of the research that relies on the real weather events, as opposed to depending only on the lab-created conditions, he said.
"I also work in a roofing research group called RICOWI [Roofing Industry Committee on Weather Issues] … they go out into the field and after an event, we would go in and look at what systems performed well, and which ones did not perform well,” Dewey said.
Dewey said every week is different; some days it is a lot of in-lab testing and other days keep him working at his computer. He said his favorite test, though, is the hail gun.
When it comes to testing the roofing materials, TRAIL works to create the most realistic conditions possible. Two of the tests they conduct use either a lab-made hail or metal ball bearings, with four sizes, starting at 1.25 inches and increasing every quarter of an inch to 2 inches. Dewey said each projectile has double the damage impact of the one before it.
Their Factory Mutual (FM) 4473 test uses lab-made hail that is frozen in a mold. The hail is then loaded into a pressurized “gun” and collides at high speed with a sample roof. The other test, Underwriters Laboratories (UL) 2218, puts the roof on the floor above a suspended platform and collides with a ball bearing dropped from the top of it. Dewey then analyzes the sample after each test to see how resistant it was.
Regardless of the natural disaster, State Farm is always looking to adapt to the needs of its policy holders, according to Jon Wey, research enterprise manager at the Bloomington-based company. He said while TRAIL is responding to recent weather events, it still keeps an eye on how to keep people better protected in the future, too.
“I’d say it’s a fairly equal balance of reactive and proactive, so as we see major storm events impact our customers, we try to leverage those as learning opportunities,” said Wey. “So as the large hailstorms roll through, what can we go out into the field to better understand and then test in the laboratory to provide better solutions to our customers.”
He said that being proactive is how external partnerships can become important because it helps them respond to future events.
“What can we hear and observe and see that may be past what we see in the here and now to inform what might be true five years from now?” Wey said. “That’s where, again, some of our partnership with the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, the conversations with those that are doing the creating of the new materials is so vitally important for us to not only manage the business today but where we need to take customers four or five years from now.”
Wey said that some of those partnerships included Factory Mutual and Underwriters Laboratories that assist them in areas like the roofing tests. They do a secondary test as an independent third party of the roofs, but State Farm does a third test just for themselves.
“We are a bit unique at State Farm that we want to get our own independent view of that same testing,” he said. “Certainly, we trust our friends at Underwriters Laboratories and their good work to help the industry, but all the better if we can see that and understand that ourselves here in Bloomington-Normal, so we’ve got multiple checks to make sure manufacturers are meeting those standards.”
Impact-resistant roofing is more expensive than standard roofing materials, but Wey said that is exactly why the company does an extra check. When they offer policy discounts to those with impact-resistant roofing, they want to make sure it is performing to standards. He also said that roofing cannot lose its standardization, as manufacturers are required to retest materials.
In a greater effort to set themselves apart from competition, Wey said other insurance companies have similar labs, but none to the scale and capacity of TRAIL.
“We are really the only [insurer] that’s had a full-scale research laboratory for over 25 years, and we have found that to be a real competitive advantage as we talk with our external research partners and as we talk with folks in the home builders and supplier’s arenas,” he said.
Corporate Communications Specialist Gina Morss-Fischer said the work Wey and Dewey do at TRAIL has a story that State Farm wants more people to know about, noting the research aspect is a part of the company that many people don’t often realize is there.
“I get excited to see this kind of work in motion, and the research our team is doing is so cool and meaningful,” she said. “They’ve kind of taken a protect and prevent approach to mitigation and keeping people safe and [in] insurance we don’t think about it sometimes.”
Morss-Fischer said the work done by State Farm is about creating the best products for homeowners to choose from and all the work done at TRAIL is working toward that mission.
“The motivation of course is to build stronger, safer communities. That means keeping our customers safer, the buildings in which we work and live,” she said. “Certainly, that’s important to the bottom line, but as a mutual company our commitment is not how much profit can we make, but how many people can we help, and we’re able to help people by doing research like this.”
At TRAIL, the work for hail is only one part of the story, said to Morss-Fischer. Other testing devices include a compressed-air cannon that fires 2x4 inch wooden boards up to 110 mph in their projectile resistance project, and structural integrity testing with a material testing system used to simulate earthquakes.
