With the unprecedented damage caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma last year, as well as the ongoing effects of Hurricanes Florence and Michael, accurate and actionable weather verification and forecasting information has never been more important. Using application-specific data and tools, companies in a wide range of industries can predict, determine and analyze the effects of extreme weather to help them make better-informed decisions more quickly.
CoreLogic Weather Verification Services can help companies address potential weather or wildfire risk in three ways:
- Forecasting: Access the best available forecasts to reveal potential impacts from wind, hail, rain and flooding to properties across your portfolio
- Real Time: Understand what is happening now with alerts and notifications to get a head start and accelerate your response.
- Forensics: Visualize and export the impacted areas after a weather event to get a complete view of how it affected specific properties within your portfolio.
Most weather solutions use data from the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center and other government agencies. Largely, these taxpayer-funded, publicly available sources were designed to forewarn the public about severe weather, making them effective at forecasting and reporting real-time weather events, but they are not very useful for forensic analysis. CoreLogic has invested the time and resources to innovate our own forensic technology and thus created comprehensive weather data sets and a visual and geospatial analysis mapping engine solution: Reactor™.
With Reactor, insurance clients can use forensic weather analysis to compare a visualization of a weather event’s effects and lay it over their book of business to discover how many of their policies were impacted. Accessing specific weather details such as localized hail size, clients can establish a loss ratio and determine a total incurred but not reported (IBNR) estimate for the event.
Insurance professionals rely on the accuracy of their IBNR estimate to ensure that they allocate the right amount of funds and resources to an event, including the size of their reserve account and the number of claims adjusters. Just last year, we saw how important a proper response can be to a business. Many insurance carriers assigned too many adjusters to Hurricane Harvey claims, only to find themselves shorthanded when Irma struck, leaving many claim holders frustrated by long waits. In this age where customers can easily switch carriers after a single bad experience, it’s crucial to maintain a positive client experience.
Accurate forensic weather analysis can also benefit companies through reinsurance. When two hailstorms hit the same region of Texas, a CoreLogic client discovered that the damage caused by only one of the storms qualified for their reinsurance coverage. CoreLogic helped the company run a Hail Verification Report across their entire book of business to get many of their claims reclassified under the covered storm, saving the company millions of dollars.
Next-gen technology is making weather verification more vital than ever to the success of companies in insurance, lending, retail, telecom and other industries. With the innovations and analytic capabilities of solutions like Reactor, businesses are harnessing new ways to protect their bottom line from the worst that Mother Nature has to offer.
By Curtis McDonald, Senior Professional, Product Management