Keys to using technology for managing weather risks

Takeaways:

• Climate-focused technologies evaluate broad risks for properties
• Education is a key component to helping property owners prepare for different perils
• Insurtech can help identify property vulnerabilities and mitigate the risks

Climate change, increasingly severe storms, more wildfires and a host of other weather-related events are highlighting the importance of carriers and policyholders becoming more proactive and mitigating some of these risks before they occur. Not all of them can be completely avoided, but technology can provide important insights when it comes to identifying vulnerabilities in various properties.
In the latest DigIn podcast, Valkyrie Homes, co-founder and CEO of Faura, an insurtech that allows insurers to gain a better understanding of property resilience for their high-risk properties, discusses the importance of technology in the climate space and how AI and analytics are helping carriers identify and manage property risks for their policyholders.

Holmes interned in NASA's Sea Institute, where she worked in the satellite imaging department before moving to SpaceX as a data analyst and engineering intern. She has been instrumental in launching assessments for wind, hail, and wildfires to provide information on climate resilience to the insurance market.

Her interest in natural disaster risks began in high school and her focus shifted to wildfires about six years ago, due in part to people moving to more high-risk areas. "And because of those high population increases, we've had to build very fast, so cheap building materials for properties in these areas. And combine that with the fact that we're not clearing brush as much as we need to and we have hotter, drier, longer seasons, and all of a sudden it starts to become, what is going on? We need to do something here," she shares in the podcast.

Holmes says that climate models have been useful, but adds that, "now we have to get more granular on the actual structure and the likelihood that it will still be standing there after a disaster occurs, which is exactly what we do. So as opposed to a traditional climate model that's telling you where disasters are likely to happen, we tell you about whether that property is likely to survive compared to the others in the area and what you can do to mitigate your risk."

It's a new way to prepare for and manage weather risks for property owners and complements carriers' efforts to be more proactive in reducing risks and lowering claims. Faura built what it terms a "survivability index" that helps assign a score to a property that considers aspects of the building and its immediate surroundings for various risks.

"And if we empower people to not only reduce their risk and take those next steps to make themselves a more profitable consumer, that's creating more of this partnership between your insurance company like it was originally meant to be," she adds.

To learn more, listen to the podcast here.