Verisk Analytics, a source of information about risk, has formed Verisk Climate to respond to growing concerns tied to managing enterprise climate and environmental risks by increasing service to customers during high-impact events and improving resilience to the growing effects of environmental extremes.
Verisk expects the new climate division’s focus on reducing risk in operational processes, such as mitigating environmental disruption across the supply chain or informing underwriting at the point of sale, to complement AIR’s focus on managing the risk of financial loss for insurers, reinsurers, brokers and insurance-linked securities investors.
“The climate division was formed to introduce new weather and environmental analytics that will enable our clients to assess and plan for environmental impacts and implement strategies to differentiate and grow their businesses despite those impacts,” said Scott Stephenson, Verisk Analytics president and CEO.
Kyle Beatty has been appointed division president of Verisk Climate. Beatty was formerly SVP of the Verisk’s Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) unit, where he was responsible for introducing new products that translate the effects of climate into decision analytics for manufacturers, insurance carriers and commodities traders.
“Verisk Climate is fundamentally different than a weather forecasting company: Our scientific knowledge, our access to environmental big data, our ability to transform that data into decision analytics, and the integration we offer into clients’ workflows through Verisk software platforms allow us to effect change in unprecedented ways,” Beatty said.
Although Beatty is moving on, Verisk noted that AER will continue to operate as a unit of Verisk Climate under the leadership of AER President Ron Isaacs.
“AER remains committed to providing scientific research, development and operational support to its government clients, including NOAA, NASA, and the Departments of Defense and Energy, and to its university and industry partners,” said Isaacs. “The new Verisk Climate Division will leverage AER’s scientists and software engineers, global environmental data resources and satellite remote-sensing expertise to innovate new products for all the markets our division serves.”
According to Verisk, insurance carriers are applying Verisk Climate software, data and analytics in catastrophe claims operations in an attempt to improve customer retention by responding faster, and to enable underwriters’ ability to reduce property loss ratios through more accurate risk selection.
“In the past three years, weather-related losses across the United States and Canada totaled more than $72 billion, according to Property Claim Services (PCS),” said Jim Loveland, president of Xactware. “Verisk Climate’s assessment of damaging weather events is accelerating our clients’ ability to process insurance claims, improving service to their policyholders.”
Beatty will report to S. Ming Lee, group executive of Verisk Analytics and president and CEO of AIR Worldwide.
