Wind, surge and everything after - the new shape of flood loss

About this event

The models, the market and the data are all moving at once – and the gaps between them are where the risk now sits.

Flood is the peril where the modelling, market and underlying data are all changing simultaneously. Both major vendors are rebuilding their US hurricane models, the US private flood market is expanding selectively into geographies and risk bands once held solely by the NFIP, and there is also a new layer of AI-derived property data that is reaching the underwriters, banks and lenders who carry flood risk on their books.

Each of these shifts matter individually. Together, they ultimately change how flood loss is estimated, priced and transferred.

Verisk’s new US hurricane model is due this year and RMS is expected to follow in 2027, both with new track sets, rebuilt wind components and new storm-surge modelling. Wind, surge and inland flood seldom arrive separately but have still long been modelled apart. How the newest models bring those interactions together has direct consequences for portfolio loss estimates.

This event is about what is changing and why, covering what is important to the underwriters, modellers and validation specialists who put the new models to work. The conversation will focus on where the models are heading and how the market needs to respond.

Equipped with a clearer view of what is changing in the rebuilds, attendees will leave understanding where private flood capacity is earning a return and how to plan a meaningful evaluation programme ahead of the 2027 renewal cycle.

Programme

4:30 pm - 5:00 pm

Registration & networking

5:00 pm - 5:05 pm

Welcome

Cameron Rye, Director of Natural Catastrophe Analytics, Willis Re

5:05 pm - 5:25 pm

Modelling the whole storm: the challenge of bringing wind and water together

Hurricane wind, storm surge and inland flood have traditionally been modelled and managed through separate frameworks, with different assumptions, datasets and views of uncertainty. Yet losses can emerge from a single physical event, with complex dependencies between the hazards, exposures and resulting damage.

This panel explores the challenge of developing a more integrated view of hurricane risk: why wind and water have historically been treated separately, where the technical and data barriers remain, and how far modelling approaches are now able to represent the interaction between them more coherently.

It will examine what a more integrated view could mean for model validation, exposure and accumulation management, underwriting and portfolio decision-making – as well as how advances in risk analytics may support new ways of structuring, transferring and financing hurricane risk.

Jeff Waters, Director, Model Product Management, Moody’s
Kelsey Mulder, Head of Research, Ariel Re
Emma Lewington, Model Product Manager, Verisk
Moderated by Jessica Boyd, Head of Model Research, WTW

5:25 pm - 5:45 pm

The US private flood market in 2026: where the opportunity lies

The US flood insurance market is changing rapidly. Risk Rating 2.0 has reshaped how the NFIP rates risk, ongoing reform discussions continue to reshape the federal programme and private flood capacity is expanding selectively into geographies and risk bands where it can earn an underwriting return. Growth remains uneven across residential and commercial lines and across coastal and inland exposure.

This session will explore how the residential and commercial opportunities differ, where the NFIP remains the natural home for risk, where private capacity is earning a return and what London market participants – Lloyd’s MGAs, reinsurers and primary carriers writing into the US – need to understand to compete effectively.

David Wood, Managing Director, JBA Risk Management
Neil Gunn, Head of Flood and Water Management Research, WTW
Jason Mackrell, Head of Exposure Management, Atrium Underwriters
Moderated by Jessica Turner, Senior Catastrophe Manager, Beazley

5:45 pm - 6:10 pm

Networking break

6:10 pm - 6:30 pm

Correlated flood: where pluvial, fluvial, surge and wind meet

Flood damage rarely arrives from a single driver. Pluvial, fluvial, flash-flood and storm-surge losses correlate within an event – and increasingly correlate with the hurricane wind losses sitting alongside them. Yet pluvial, fluvial and surge have historically been modelled in different ways, sometimes within a single vendor framework and sometimes across separate ones. The newest generation of models – built on higher-resolution hydraulics, improved terrain data and explicit spatial correlation – aims to capture these interactions in a way that legacy approaches could not.

Vendor approaches diverge meaningfully. Each one handles the interactions between wind, surge and inland flood in different ways and how those interactions are wired together has direct implications for portfolio loss estimates. Claims calibration and validation remain the hardest part of the problem – the data the industry needs to close the loop is patchy at best. This panel brings together modellers, underwriters and validation specialists to examine where the models have genuinely improved, what they still cannot resolve and how insurers and reinsurers should apply them in pricing, capital and reinsurance decisions.

Dr. Alec Vessey, Risk Specialist, AXA XL
Ludovico Nicotina, Head of Catastrophe Research, Inigo
Hannah Bloomfield, Academic Track Fellow, Newcastle University
Moderated by Sophie Wentges, Nat Cat Analytics Manager, Willis Re

6:30 pm - 6:50 pm

AI-enhanced flood exposure data: insurers, banks and lenders

Flood intelligence is no longer the domain of insurers alone. Banks, mortgage servicers and infrastructure investors increasingly need asset-level clarity on which buildings flood, by how much and with what financial consequence. Advances in AI-derived property data – ground-floor elevation from aerial imagery, building footprints from satellite, drone-captured post-event damage assessment, and LIDAR-driven terrain data – are delivering a level of granularity far beyond what traditional sources provided. Most of the current AI property work has been US-focused; the same techniques are now being applied to UK and European exposure too.

This session brings together the people generating the new property-data layer and the stakeholders who price, hold and manage flood risk on their balance sheets – coastal and inland. The discussion will examine how rapid post-event damage assessment, high-resolution exposure data and modern flood models are reshaping risk selection, claims response, credit decisions and capital allocation across insurers, reinsurers and the broader financial economy.

Chris Cameron-Hann, Chief Technical Officer, 7Analytics
Ester Calavia Garsaball, Managing Director, Global Head of Nat Cat & Risk Financing, Climate Practice, WTW
Mark Philips, Vice President Client Development (EMEA Lead), Zesty AI
Moderated by: Brian Owens, Catastrophe Risk Advisor