Working with Liberty Specialty Markets to proactively mitigate flood impacts for their clients

Background

Liberty Specialty Markets (LSM), part of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, is a global insurer and reinsurer. LSM's customers include a wide range of different specialty customers, including manufacturing, energy, property and retail.

Challenge

Exacerbated by climate change and increased urbanisation, flooding is the largest natural hazard in the UK. The impact on customers can be widespread and multi-faceted, as it affects stock, business interruption and buildings. Flooding is a complex risk to assess due to various factors, and predicting flood events accurately is challenging.

There is a growing need to understand and mitigate the risk from all flood perils, including surface water and ordinary watercourses, which are not covered by most forecasting systems. Addressing these challenges requires collaboration between insurers, corporates and other stakeholders to develop comprehensive risk management strategies and ensure the availability and affordability of flood insurance coverage.

Solution

In 2020, Previsico produced a Proof of Concept (POC) report with the Lloyd's Lab, with mentoring from LSM, which produced over 70% accuracy in its forecasting. The following year, LSM integrated Previsico's Flood Warning Service API into their Risk Reduce portal to provide advance warnings to Commercial Property and Construction clients across 10,000 locations.

This partnership has seen flood-affected commercial clients receive Previsico's personalised warnings and a real-time view of flood forecasting across their property estates, highlighting where they might be impacted during the next 48 hours. This is visualised for them along with appropriate risk engineering guidance within the portal. LSM's Risk Reduce portal provides their customers access to support, guidance and training to help them manage the risks they face in their business more effectively.

In 2022, the partnership developed further by starting the process of installing Previsico's sensors as part of our Flood Warning Service. The sensors are installed in flood-prone rivers, streams, drainage systems, construction sites and culverts close to selected risks so that LSM's clients can be notified if water levels in their proximity rise to the point that flooding is a possibility. The sensors also detect when drains and culverts are flooding, enabling facilities managers to clear blockages and prevent further flooding.

Impact

• Improved Flood Warning System: Provision of early and accurate flood warnings, reducing the number of false alarms for customers and preventing unnecessary mobilisation of people and equipment.
• Efficient Flood Action Plans: Supporting flood action plans with actionable information.
• Enhanced Claims Management: Improved claims management by using Previsico's Flood Warning Service to enable faster processing of genuine claims, mobilisation of claims operations, and securing supply chains ahead of a surge in claims.
• Strengthened Customer Relationships: Providing customers with improved services to support proactive risk management.

"Previsico's technology allows us to use data intelligently and integrate it seamlessly into our risk management portal for customers. This provides very real value to our insureds."

Carol Baker, Head of Digital, Liberty Specialty Markets