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How are insurers accessing property data?
Accurately locating a property is essential for understanding its associated risks. Advances in technology such as geospatial imagery are making more accurate and timely data available to insurers.
New data sources are also being found, from places traditionally outside of insurance. This can range from portals listing properties for sale to aerial imagery originally used by the military sector.
This growing amount of location and property data is increasingly available through third-party platforms and distributors that allow multiple data sets to be accessed in one place.
Ahead of writing our location intelligence report, we are intrigued to know how insurers, MGAs and brokers are accessing third-party property data. Do you prefer to go direct to the source, use a platform or something completely different? Read more from Matthew and have your say via our poll here.
Archipelago: Curing the property pain chain
Archipelago, founded in 2018, works with large global corporations to identify and source information about a property. Co-founder and CEO Hemant Shah returns to the InsTech podcast on episode 207 to discuss the company’s evolution over the past year, issues associated with matching loss history data to exposure data and how ESG requirements are changing resiliency reporting.
RE5Q: New sources of property data – beyond insurance
RE5Q provides built environment data originally focused on the real estate market. Matthew was joined by CEO Martin Samworth and CTO Seth Rogers on podcast episode 205 to talk about how the company is using its experience in real estate to tackle some of the hardest problems when finding verifiable and timely information for insurers, along with case studies and client examples.
McKenzie Intelligence Services: providing data-driven intelligence
In this interview as part of our Spotlight series, Rosina Smith and Daniel Grimwood-Bird talk about McKenzie Intelligence Services’ catastrophe response platform, how it has been reporting on the Ukraine conflict and how the company is working within parametric insurance. The company has recently partnered with Markel to accelerate the insurer’s incident and claims responses following major loss events, including natural catastrophes.
JBA Risk Management: Assessing future flood risk globally
JBA Risk Management provides catastrophe models, flood maps and analytics worldwide to the insurance, financial, property and international development sectors. Judith Ellison, the Climate Commercial Lead at JBA Risk, talks to Matthew on podcast episode 206 about how the company can provide future flood risk data across the globe, the importance of working with academics and the impact that new reporting requirements will have on the insurance industry.
In the news…
Howden launches product for the voluntary carbon market
Having worked with Nephila Capital, an investment manager specialising in reinsurance risk, and carbon finance business Respira International, Howden has developed a carbon credit invalidation insurance solution. The product will protect against third-party negligence and fraud, aiming to de-risk and accelerate the use of the voluntary carbon market.
Chaucer launches ESG scorecard
Working with Moody’s, Chaucer has created ‘scorecards’ on clients and business to measure their ESG performance. 158 different metrics are used to assign scores for corporates across Environmental, Social and Governance factors. Metrics that companies are rated on include disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions and health and safety conditions of workers. Chaucer is now embedding its ESG Balanced Scorecard into underwriting, investments and operations.
AXA Climate to use RMS for wind parametric triggers
AXA Climate, the specialist parametric unit within AXA, has chosen the RMS HWind product to use as a trigger data provider for its US hurricane parametric policies. The product provides observation-based tropical cyclone data for both real-time and historical events, as well as snapshots of a storm’s wind field every six hours. To learn more about the companies working within the parametric space, you can download our recent Parametric Insurance in 2022: the 150+ Companies to Watch report.
Arturo partners with Vexcel Imaging
Vexcel, the Austrian-based aerial imagery data company, will provide Arturo with high-resolution imagery to help insurers identify vulnerable property characteristics, respond to claims and underwrite policies with greater accuracy. To learn more about how Arturo helps insurers with their claims process, you can read InsTech’s recent Property Remote Claims Assessment – the 40 Companies to Watch report.
Gamma Location Intelligence partners with Sust Global for climate data
Sust Global, founded in 2020, provides geospatial climate data and projections across a range of hazards, as well as scope 1 and 2 emission monitoring capabilities. The company’s global climate data will be integrated into Gamma’s Perilfinder platform. This will allow insurers and MGAs to access forward-looking climate change hazard maps across risks such as wildfire, floods, cyclones, sea-level rise, drought and heatwaves.
dClimate acquires Oasis Hub
Founded in 2021, dClimate offers a decentralised marketplace where climate data, forecasts and models can be standardised and distributed. The company has recently acquired Oasis Hub, an aggregator for catastrophe, extreme weather, climate change and environmental risk data. This will all now be available on dClimate’s decentralised climate data network. The company has also recently partnered with Hyphen, a decentralised network that gathers, validates and standardises global emissions data to provide this to their customers.
ICEYE launches pilot flood scheme with If P&C Insurance
If P&C Insurance will use ICEYE’s Flood Insights product to help its claims handling processes for flood-related losses and to proactively respond to customer needs during an event. Stephen Lathrope, ICEYE’s Global Head of Insurance, was joined by Matthew on InsTech podcast episode 197 to discuss how ICEYE is expanding its offering from floods into other natural perils.
Addresscloud completes Acturis integration
Addresscloud has partnered with software house Acturis to provide underwriters with API access to its real-time risk data. Customers will now be able to access address-level risk scores for flood, subsidence, windstorm, fire and crime, as well as residential and commercial attributes at point of quote, without having to develop new integrations.
IncubEx to relaunch electronically traded hurricane products in 2023
Between 2008 and 2011, IFEX (Insurance Futures Exchange) traded parametric US hurricane products on the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange. IncubEx’s Neil Eckert plans to relaunch IFEX before the 2023 hurricane season. In the recent InsTech podcast episode 191, Robin was joined by Neil to discuss how the insurance industry has changed throughout his career, how to recognise and respond to new opportunities in the climate space and his current work as Chairman of IncubEx.
Moody’s: Japanese fire premiums to increase
To account for the growing frequency and intensity of climate-related natural catastrophes, a recent Moody’s report predicts that Japanese P&C insurers will increase fire insurance premiums. Moody’s also predicts that insurers will shorten policy durations and switch to a location-specific pricing system.
Betterview to provide wildfire insights for US
Betterview has partnered with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a US non-profit, to provide property and community-level wildfire insights. These insights will be available through Betterview’s Wildfire Risk Insights solution, a new feature of the Betterview Property Intelligence & Risk Management Platform.