News

5 Hurdles to Insurtech Success

We like to joke that we started an insuretech because we wanted to make money as slowly as possible. It’s a funny, yet exceedingly painful, joke.

We were asked recently to discuss issues that Insurtech companies face in becoming successful. We came up with 5 things that stand between insurtechs and success. Here they are but please note – your mileage may differ.

1) The Maths – All Insuretechs have one super-challenging math equation to overcome –

Risk = Bad

Insuretech = Risk

Therefore, Insuretech = Bad

Insuretechs are busy trying to make themselves more inventive. Which only makes them riskier. As this equation shows us, that’s a bad thing. Much more attention needs to be paid to how Insuretechs can de-risk themselves and make it easier for insurance professionals to rely on them.

HazardHub adds more than 225,000 fire hydrant locations to HydrantHub in January, approaching 11 million hydrant locations

SAN DIEGO CA – HazardHub, the USA’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data and a 2019 Insuretech 100 member – announced that they have added over 225,000 fire hydrant locations to HydrantHub, the nation’s largest collection of known fire hydrant locations. HydrantHub now stands on the edge of its 11 millionth hydrant location.

Michael Jolitz, Chief Technology Officer of HazardHub says, “Our teams have worked tirelessly to add new and verified hydrant locations to the HydrantHub database. Every day, we’re mapping hydrant locations for places both large and small. Our goal is to map every hydrant in the country.”

The latest update included data from 41 states, with particular emphasis on the states of New York, New Jersey and Louisiana.

Accurate hydrant locations are a critical factor in helping to suppress the risk of a house fire.

HazardHub Named to the InsurTech 100 list of the world’s most innovative companies

SAN DIEGO, CA – HazardHub is delighted to announce their inclusion to the 2019 Insuretech 100 – a listing of the world’s most innovative Insuretech companies. The InsurTech100 for 2019 is announced by FinTech Global, a specialist research firm.

John Siegman, CCA of HazardHub says, “We are thrilled to be added to the InsurTech 100 list. From the beginning days of HazardHub, our goal has been to constantly invent new and more accurate data tools for our clients to appropriately judge risk. The InsurTech 100 recognition tells the world what our clients already know – if you want inventive, cutting-edge data, there’s really only one place to go. That’s HazardHub.”

The Insurtech (insurance technology) industry has seen huge growth in the last two years as insurance companies grapple with the challenges of digital transformation and new demands from customers.

HazardHub Announces Property Fire Score – the first ever tool to measure the fire severity risk of an individual property

HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, is excited to announce the release Property Fire Score (PFS), the first system ever to measure the risk of fire for an individual property.

Brady Foust, Chief Scientist of HazardHub says, “We’ve spent the last 18 months diving into the factors that impact the severity of fires at a specific property. We’ve examined thousands of fires and hundreds of variables to determine that fire damage of a property is impacted by three powerful factors – drive time to the nearest station, the type of responding station and the presence of accessible water. PFS is the first tool to measure risk at the property level. No more ‘one size fits all’ area-level measurements.”

Property Fire Score leverages the power of two databases unique to HazardHub – a national Fire Station Database of over 55,000 stations and HydrantHub,

HazardHub Launches Desktop AgentRiskViewTM Product at Agency Connect InsureTech Event

SAN DIEGO CA – HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, is excited to announce the release of the first of its kind SaaS risk delivery product for agents, underwriters and anyone else interested in fast, accurate hazard risk and property data.

John Siegman, CCA of HazardHub says, “We get more than 1,000 visitors to our website every day, looking up data one record at a time for our Distance To Fire Station, Distance to Hydrant, Distance to Shore, Elevation and Flood tools. We saw that many of these users were insurance agents, CSRs and underwriters. These same users were clamoring for an easy to use subscription product that would deliver all of the data they wanted for an address. To meet the demand, we developed AgentRiskViewTM.”

AgentRiskViewTM provides fast and easy access to HazardHub’s incredible collection of powerful data tools,

HazardHub Launches HazardHub-WeatherMax – Next Generation Wind, Hail, Tornado, and Lightning Probability Database.

SAN DIEGO – HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, is excited to announce the release of the first of its kind property-level probability scores for any address in the United States.

Dr. Brady Foust, Ph.D. – Chief Science Officer of HazardHub – says “Current geospatial models for convection storm-driven events – like damaging wind, hail, tornado, and lightning – are, in a word, rough. The take high-level events and try to push them down to large grid cells. It’s a dated process that was the best we had, given the available data.”

Foust adds “At HazardHub, we wanted to take a leap forward with the science. The emergence of Doppler radar has increased the granularity of available data. Together with our science, we’re now able to predict the risk of a convection storm happening at a specific property.

HazardHub Adds to its Library of Free Research Options with “Do I Need Flood Insurance” and “Property Elevation” Tools

HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, is excited to announce the release of the first of its kind “Do I Need Flood Insurance” tool, available immediately at HazardHub.com, under the Tools tab.

Dr. Brady Foust, Ph.D. – Chief Science Officer of HazardHub – says “Flooding is the number one disaster in the United States. We’ve spent much of the past three years creating as complete a data set as possible for flood risk. Looking at flood risk is a problem bigger than just FEMA maps. While we usually provide this data to the insurance industry, we also saw a huge need for consumers to have an easy-to-understand answer to the vexing issue of flood insurance. Our new “Do I Need Flood Insurance” tool provides answers based upon the user’s property address.”

The HazardHub flood data sets are comprised of three factors.

HazardHub zooms past 100 billion data points for Property analysis

SAN DIEGO CA – HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, is excited to announce that it has recently passed 100 billion data points for property analysis in the United States.

Dr. Brady Foust, Ph.D. – Chief Science Officer of HazardHub – says “We’ve worked incredibly hard to develop an unparalleled amount of data for companies concerned with property risk characteristics. Over the last three years, we’ve spent an enormous amount of time increasing the depth and sophistication of our data. We’re pleased to announce that we can currently deliver over 100 billion data points across the United States. The amount and quality of data available via HazardHub are simply unmatched by any other property data company in the United States.”

The process of getting to 100 billion data points involved building dozens of national data sets that provide unparalleled insights to the risks – both simple and complex – that can impact both personal and commercial properties across the US.

HazardHub Introduces ReplacementHubTM Property Replacement Estimations

HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, is pleased to announce the introduction of Home Replacement Cost estimates from our award-winning API.

HazardHub combines its high-resolution property data with the intelligence provided by e2Value to create ReplacementHub, an estimate of the amount needed to replace the existing property structure. ReplacementHub recognizes the difference in both commercial and residential properties, applying the most appropriate answer for a given location.

Bob Frady, CEO of HazardHub, says “the recent string of wildfires in California has introduced a new and expensive hazard for property insurers – underinsurance. People are surprised to find that – from a catastrophe or not – they often don’t have enough insurance to cover the cost of rebuilding a home or business. In the end, the insurance company can end up with a compliance and customer nightmare,

HazardHub Introduces Mold Susceptibility Database and Updated Fire Station and Wildfire Data

HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, is pleased to announce the launch of two brand new data sets and updates to four others. All new and updated data is immediately available via the HazardHub API.

New datasets include –

HazardHub Mold Susceptibility Index – Mold is an increasingly serious problem for insurers, as undetected water leaks and other environmental conditions can provide a great environment for mold. Mold forms from a combination of internal construction and external environmental conditions. HazardHub’s Mold Susceptibility Index provides a score of the likelihood that the external environmental conditions that encourage mold growth exist at a property.

Airport Noise – We’ve taken noise contours and flight paths from hundreds of public and private airports to create our Airport Noise database.