Willis Re partnership evolves ‘wildfire risk score’ to raise insurance industry accuracy

Willis Re clients can now access support to write and price wildfire risk more accurately, as the reinsurance division of Willis Towers Watson has started offering a “location level wildfire risk” service.

The service, a response to recent devastating wildfires in California, examines how the risk correlates to the company’s portfolio level wildfire exposure. Willis Re said that after the California fires it was clear that “many carriers do not have a good handle on their wildfire risk”, which the division said was “largely due to existing industry models which do not accurately represent the hazard”.

In 2016 Willis Re started developing a wildfire risk score to “help bridge this gap”, which has led to a partnership between the reinsurer and SpatialKey, a data enrichment and geospatial analytics hub for the P&C industry. Together the partners have developed the solution further to be able to deliver it to clients at their point of quote.

Vaughn Jensen, executive vice president of Willis Re, said: “The Willis Re Wildfire Score provides the framework for our clients to achieve meaningful portfolio and underwriting improvements with the least amount of disruption. We are also pleased to extend the scope of our partnership with SpatialKey and continue to explore how collectively we can deliver superior value to our clients.”

Tom Link, CEO and founder of SpatialKey, said: “At SpatialKey, we help clients enable, enrich, and analyse data across underwriting, exposure management, and claims workflows. Our insight hub brings together expert content from over 20 data providers across multiple perils into a single platform.

“This initiative with Willis Re extends the reach of our underwriting platform and allows Willis Re to quickly, contextually, and flexibly deploy hazard data to their clients at their point of quote. We are excited to explore how we can bring operational efficiency to the market through our partnership."