First parametric flood insurance for UK racecourses, built on Previsico sensor data

Royal Windsor Racecourse, owned and operated by Arena Racing Company (ARC), sits directly on the River Thames and had previously been considered uninsurable for flood risk. In partnership with Willis, specialist underwriter Descartes Underwriting, and insurer Generali, Previsico's sensor technology made it the first UK venue to go live with a parametric flood insurance policy.

The challenge

UK racecourses face a growing and largely unmet flood risk challenge. Typically situated on low-lying floodplains, venues are highly exposed to property damage, costly clean-up and business interruption losses. The result has been a chronic protection gap: insurers had either excluded flood cover entirely at the most exposed locations or imposed deductibles that made cover impractical, leaving Royal Windsor Racecourse without a workable option.

The solution

Previsico installed a flood sensor at a location on the insured property chosen in consultation with ARC to reflect the racecourse's specific exposure profile, providing continuous, real-time monitoring of water levels as the foundation for the policy. The Flood Intelligence Platform gives ARC:

• Automatic, objective payouts: when floodwater reaches the pre-agreed trigger depth, a payout activates automatically, scaling with the maximum recorded water height up to the policy limit.
• No loss adjuster, no claims process: payouts are released quickly, giving ARC the financial certainty it needs to recover and resume operations.
• Early alerts ahead of the trigger: when water levels begin to rise, ARC's teams get advance notice to move sensitive equipment to higher ground before damage occurs.
• A replicable model: designed from the outset to scale across ARC's 16 UK racecourses, several of which share a similar flood exposure profile to Royal Windsor.

The results

• Cover where none existed before: a venue previously considered uninsurable for flood risk now has protection built on real-time sensor data.
• Dual protection and prevention: the same monitoring that underpins the policy also gives ARC's teams time to act before floodwater causes damage.
• A model for the wider market: a template for unlocking cover at other sport, events and commercial property risks the traditional market has struggled to price.

"The business has previously not been able to insure against flooding, so this new approach, combined with the ongoing monitoring of river levels by Previsico, will be hugely important."

Kieran Gallagher, Group Operations Director, Arena Racing Company