Swiss Re Corporate Solutions (SRCS), the commercial insurance arm of reinsurer Swiss Re, has announced the launch of a new parametric hail insurance solution, HAIL.
The new parametric hail cover provides companies in the U.S. with insurance protection against the financial impact of a significant hail event.
This includes things like physical damage, lost revenue due to business interruption, or significant retentions in traditional property policies, says SRCS.
Structured using a parametric trigger, HAIL enables rapid payout post-event, with catastrophe risk modeller CoreLogic serving as the data provider for the solution.
Under the strategic agreement, CoreLogic’s proprietary hail verification model, which is able to verify the maximum hail size both at the location and in the surrounding area, will be leveraged by SRCS to determine whether a policy has been triggered.
SRCS explains that, HAIL combines the customer location data with a pay-out table that details policy amounts for reported hail size at said location(s) during a hail event. CoreLogic then provides the hail size data to SRCS in the days following an event. A pay-out is triggered when a customer has hail damage and the hail size required under the policy has been met, removing the need for loss evaluation so that the funds can reach the customer faster.
Cole Mayer, Vice President Innovative Risk Solutions, said: “We are excited to bring a parametric HAIL product to market in collaboration with CoreLogic®, a proven leader in the hail verification space. The speed of pay-out, transparency in claims adjustment, and flexibility in the use of the funds make this a powerful tool to supplement traditional insurance policies or to buy as a standalone product if traditional coverage is less available.”
As noted by SRCS, hail has the potential to cause significant financial disruption to individuals and businesses, and the new solution looks to address gaps in traditional insurance in the event of a major hail event.
Currently, HAIL is available in 11 states across the U.S.: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas.
Steve Brewer, Executive of Insurance & Spatial at CoreLogic, added: “Our mission at CoreLogic® is to help people find, buy and protect their properties. We deliver the industry’s most precise hail data solution that quantifies risk and verifies event location and severity from the same source data.
“With our hail models, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions can confidently structure hail risk transfer solutions to better protect policyholders, slash cycle times and significantly reduce claims adjusting expense following hailstorms.”