Verisk ties up with RiskSpan to create new climate change solution

Insurance data analytics provider  Verisk has partnered with mortgage analytics firm RiskSpan to create a solution for measuring and mitigating the risks of climate change to the housing finance industry.

The company claims the solution is first of its kind on the market.

The collaboration unites RiskSpan’s Edge Platform for mortgage analytics with Verisk Extreme Event Solutions’ proven set of models, which is used by insurers and reinsurers, corporate and government entities to assess the risk from natural catastrophes and climate to a given location by providing a property-specific hazard risk metric.

Additionally, it offers loan-level scoring and climate stress testing, with applications for loan screening, portfolio management, and financial disclosures.

According to Verisk, the risk to the housing finance industry from extreme events is significant, with almost 62 million residential locations at moderate to extreme risk of flooding alone.

“The collaborative solution will bring together the best extreme event models, data and climate analytics to the mortgage finance industry,” said Bill Churney (pictured), president, Verisk’s Extreme Event Solutions unit. “With financial institutions facing increased pressure to factor climate risk into their decision making, we expect RiskSpan’s enhanced tools powered by Verisk to be a welcome addition to their risk management process.”

Roger Grenier, senior vice president of Verisk’s global resilience practice, added: “Our collaboration with RiskSpan will serve to greatly benefit the housing finance industry by adding critical data and analytics from Verisk’s catastrophe models during the loan screening process. This added layer of portfolio management can help banks and financial institutions better understand the potential risk from extreme weather events to a given property.”

Bernadette Kogler, chief executive officer of RiskSpan, said: “We are thrilled to bring the powerful climate and hazard risk analytics of Verisk to our clients. This alliance opens the door to a world of property-level data from the insurance industry that can have tremendous value for applications in the mortgage space.”

Janet Jozwik, the managing director heading up RiskSpan’s contribution to the new partnership, noted: “ Verisk’s ground-up approach to property-specific risk analysis is the perfect complement to our loan-level approach to mortgage credit and prepayment modeling. We are excited to layer Verisk’s unique property risk scoring into our existing credit and portfolio risk framework.”

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