US-based insurtech company Betterview has introduced Hurricane Risk Insights solution for property and casualty (P&C) insurers amid a surge in catastrophic weather events due to climate change.
The new tool will be a part of Betterview Property Intelligence & Risk Management Platform and will help P&C insurers to better understand the risks associated with hurricanes and protect policyholders.
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Hurricane Risk Insights features a single-screen user interface (UI) to provide granular property conditions. It also incorporates regional hazard and property-specific vulnerability to offer a comprehensive understanding of hurricane risk.
The tool further enables the insurers to have an improved communication with agents and policyholders recommending various risk mitigation ways including clearing vegetation and changing ageing roof materials.
Betterview co-founder and chief operating officer (COO) David Tobias said: “Faced with the potential of devastating losses, many insurers are simply cancelling policies en masse, or even ending business in certain states.
“At Betterview, we don’t believe either of those strategies is sustainable. We need to get ahead of the risk and understand it thoroughly so that we can predict and prevent the losses.”
Notably, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has forecasted an ‘above-normal’ 2022 hurricane season for the seventh successive year.
Betterview chief technology officer (CTO) Jason Janofsky said: “Traditional solutions for hurricane risk tend to only focus on the likelihood of a storm occurring in a general area, aka hazard.
“Our platform does feature highly accurate hazard data from our third-party partners and public data, such as HazardHub, True Flood Risk, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). But we also use our computer vision technology to evaluate the vulnerability of each property, considering factors such as roof conditions, defensible space, and more.
“This returns a Hurricane Vulnerability Score which insurers can use along with the hazard data to make confident underwriting decisions quickly.”
In April this year, Betterview launched Wildfire Risk Insights to enable the insurers evaluate a property’s precise level of wildfire risk and the factors related to it.
