Surface water flooding is the biggest flood risk in the UK, affecting many businesses, including this customer and 3mil people in the UK, compared to river and sea flood risk, which affects 2.4mil people. The scale of the issue came into the spotlight once again following Storm Christoph, which was uniquely forecasted by Previsico, utilising the latest geospatial technology and weather predictions, in partnership with IBM.
Jonathan Jackson, CEO, Previsico, said: “We are delighted to collaborate with Zurich and their major corporate customer, one of the biggest household names in the UK, to pilot our unique live flood forecasting solution on a commercial basis. This will help to reduce the impact of surface water flooding, including the huge cost and waste of reliance resources caused by current inaccurate early warning systems for surface water and small watercourse floods.
Jonathan Newbery, Head of Digital Experience at Zurich,said: “We are excited to work on this pilot with Previsico and our exceptional customer with their sophisticated flood risk management team and processes. The insights we gain from this tripartite experience will help us to better understand how we can support our commercial customers on critical issues like flooding, using innovative and digitally enabled approaches like Previsico’s.”
Already relied upon by the Cabinet Office and Emergency Services, Previsico’s flood forecasting technology providesinsurers with the ability to alert customers of imminent flooding, down to an individual property level (25m). This enables them to take action to reduce losses and the impact this has across other areas of the business,such as the customer experience, underwriting, claims, loss accumulation, and sustainability.
Previsico’s solution also provides a visualisation tool in the case of flooding, so that claims teams can more accurately understand where incidents have occurred to reach affected properties and people. The visualization tool enables insurers to offer a better service, leading to happier customers, as well as enabling an earlier indication of total losses, reduced fraud, and improved claims efficiency.
About Previsico
Voted into the ‘Hot 100’ global InsurTechs by Intelligent InsurTech, Previsico provides real-time, street-level surface water flood forecasts to mitigate flood impacts globally, including live actionable street-level flood nowcast and forecast warnings.
A spinout company from Loughborough University, Previsico was launched earlier in 2019 following 20 years of academic research, with the support of the Cabinet Office, Met Office, and Environment Agency.
Previsico’s mission is to be the leading global provider of cutting-edge flood prediction that saves lives and livelihoods, with the whole of the UK live and much of the USA mapped. Previsico is also targeting the Asia market and opened an office in Hong Kong in 2020.
Led by serial tech entrepreneur Jonathan Jackson, CEO, Previsico employs a diverse, fast-expanding, and highly skilled team with strong business acumen and research expertise.
