Financial Institution Accelerates Site Assessment Process 5x And Expands Risk Modeling Capabilities

Background

The financial institution maintains a significant portfolio of real estate investments and office locations throughout the United States. The organization's corporate security team regularly provides threat assessments to various internal stakeholders, including their real estate investment division.

These comprehensive assessments analyze multiple threat hazards, with crime and civil unrest being critical components that influence investment decisions. The assessments help validate the risk profile of potential properties before finalizing leasing or development commitments.

The Challenge: Speed Without Sacrificing Depth

When the real estate team requested security assessments for five different neighborhoods in a major US city within a one-week deadline, the security team faced a significant challenge. Using their previous methods:

• Each assessment required a full week to complete
• Multiple data analyst resources were needed per assessment
• Data collection was manual and inconsistent across regions
• Analysis lacked the granularity needed to differentiate between areas within the same city

This reactive approach meant the security team was often the bottleneck in the investment decision process, limiting their strategic value to the organization.

Solution Implementation

The security team transformed their assessment process using Base Operations:

Phase 1: Immediate Analysis Deployment The security analyst leveraged Base Operations' radius-based analysis feature to conduct hyperlocal threat assessments for all five locations simultaneously. This provided standardized, granular intelligence down to the sub-mile level for each target neighborhood.

Phase 2: Data Integration Concurrently, the BI team used the Base Operations API to:

• Ingest crime data and change detection metrics
• Incorporate street-level intelligence into existing risk models
• Create standardized scoring mechanisms for different property types

Phase 3: Cross-Departmental Collaboration The Director of Security established direct communication channels between security analysts and the real estate team. This enabled:

• Daily interactions to refine the initial site list
• Focused reevaluation using Base Operations' Change Detection tool to identify increases and decreases in crime
• Data-driven conversations about specific threat types relevant to each property type

Transformative Results

Operational Efficiency: The security analyst delivered comprehensive threat assessments for all five neighborhoods within one week—a task that would have previously required five weeks and multiple analysts. This 500% improvement in efficiency immediately positioned the security team as an enabler rather than a bottleneck.

Increased Business Demand: Following this successful implementation, requests from the real estate team increased by 300% in the subsequent month. The dramatically improved speed-to-insight transformed how the investment team perceived security's value in their decision-making process.

Enhanced Risk Modeling: The BI team created sophisticated new risk models incorporating Base Operations data:

• Standardized BaseScores for comparing risk levels across different neighborhoods
• Trend analysis showing how crime patterns were evolving in target investment areas
• Crime type breakdowns to assess risks relevant to specific property uses

Strategic Organizational Impact: The Director of Security successfully elevated the security function from a cost center to a strategic advantage. By providing data-driven insights that directly supported business objectives, the security team strengthened relationships with key stakeholders and demonstrated measurable value to the organization.

Ongoing Applications

The financial institution continues to expand its use of Base Operations:

• Integrating threat intelligence into early-stage investment screening
• Incorporating crime data into property valuation models
• Using change detection to monitor existing properties in the portfolio
• Applying the same methodology to global investment opportunities

This proactive approach to security intelligence has transformed how the organization evaluates real estate investments, making security an integral part of business strategy rather than just a compliance function.