Excellence and Compliance are Front and Center

2014 will be a challenging year for many, as industry volumes are predicted to be over a third lower than last year, yet the number of participants in the market remains about the same. For most firms, this means working even harder to maintain or grow market share. The best way firms can compete is to simply outperform their competitors, which allows clients and prospects to clearly identify an advantageous business relationship. The challenge for AMCs will be striving to improve on already very high service levels and report quality standards.

At Allstate, we have reviewed our strengths and weaknesses from 2013; and as we strive to make 2014 an even better year, we will introduce further resources to improve client satisfaction. Additional residential and commercial staff appraisers and reviewers will be added to the organization to reduce our turn times. Our focus will also be on improving the standardization of our commercial report formats by taking advantage of new technology, which will reduce occasional housekeeping or inconsistency errors, as well as improve the efficiencies of the report writing process. We will continue to build on our technology platform, adding automation wherever sensible and beneficial to our clients. In addition, we will continue to produce educational curriculum for our clients, along with publishing timely, compliance-related updates on our new website.

Allstate is pleased to maintain continued partnerships with our existing client-base, in addition to recently being selected by several high quality lending institutions to provide them with appraisal and review services nationally. This equates to great opportunities for increased order volume for our vendors nationally. Just like our clients will rely on us to really shine in 2014, we too require that of our vendors, and in 2014 we will begin managing our vendors even more proactively helping them to maximize their performance-related scores and enhance their order volume from us.

2014 reflects our 55th year in business; and during most of this time, change has been a constant companion of ours. We are enthusiastic and highly motivated to continue to build on our reputation by being as valuable to our clients as possible in every way.

We wish our clients and friends a prosperous and rewarding new year!