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InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant

Peter Lacovara: Head of Commercial, Floodbase: Making parametric flood insurance possible (252)

InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant

InsTech

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.850 Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Flood events are increasing around the world, with many losses uncovered by insurance. Whilst parametric solutions can help provide new capacity to insure catastrophic risks and widen access to insurance, parametric flood insurance is not yet as widespread as parametric covers for hurricanes or earthquakes, due in part to data and modelling challenges specific to flood.  Henry Gale speaks to Peter Lacovara, Head of Commercial, Floodbase about how the company is working to make parametric flood insurance possible with satellite imagery, machine learning and partnerships with insurers and brokers. Topics include: Peter's experience leading parametric broking in North America at Marsh The types of companies looking for parametric flood insurance Training a machine to find flood water in satellite images What 'fractional flooded area' is and how it can be used as a parametric trigger Floodbase's work with FEMA on the US National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) We’d love to know what you think about this episode - click here and add your thoughts to our LinkedIn post about it. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on LinkedIn. Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning. To find out more about InsTech, our membership and offerings visit www.instech.co or contact us [email protected] Continuing Professional Development - Learning Objectives InsTech is accredited by The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). By listening to any InsTech podcast, you can claim up to 0.5 hours towards your CPD scheme. By the end of this podcast, you should be able to meet the following Learning Objectives: Explain some of the data & modelling challenges flood insurance encounters Describe how using satellite imagery can provide a solution to flood insurance Identify the key benefits of having different partnerships If your organisation is a member of InsTech and you would like to receive a quarterly summary of the CPD hours you have earned, visit the Episode 252 page of the InsTech website or email [email protected] to let us know you have listened to this podcast. To help us measure the impact of the learning, we would be grateful if you would take a minute to complete a quick feedback survey

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome or welcome back. If it's your first time, great to have you join us, Matthew Grant here.

0:13.0

Now, we all know flood events are increasing around the world, and this is still a tough peril

0:18.1

to cover with conventional insurance. Parametric solutions are helping to provide

0:22.4

new capacity to ensure catastrophic risks, but parametric flood insurance is not yet as popular

0:28.0

as parametric covers for hurricanes and earthquakes due in part to data and modeling challenges

0:33.5

specific to flood. Well, Henry Gale is your host this week and he's speaking to Peter

0:37.6

Lacavera, head of commercial at Flood Base. And they talk about how the company is working to make

0:42.4

parametric flood insurance possible with satellite imagery, machine learning and partnerships

0:47.2

with insurers and brokers.

0:57.2

Peter Lackavara, it's great to have you on the podcast.

0:59.4

Thanks a lot for having me, Henry. I'm happy to be here.

1:05.5

So you're the head of commercial for flood base, and the company was founded in 2015,

1:09.8

originally called Cloud to Street, and you're specialized in flood mapping.

1:12.3

He started off working with governments to manage their flood response, but recently you raised $12 million in your Series A and rebranded

1:18.0

to flood base with an offering to the insurance industry using your data to model and monitor

1:23.9

flood risk for parametric insurance. Peter, what have I missed there?

1:28.3

No, I think that's exactly right. We've been in the business of flood mapping for almost 10 years,

1:33.1

but we are kind of new to the insurance world, and that was really the impetus for raising a Series A about a year ago.

1:39.6

But you're not new to the insurance world. Tell me a bit about your background and what attracted you to

1:44.8

work at Flood Base. So I joined Flood Base in April of 2022, so just over a year ago, from Marsh,

1:53.3

where I was head of Parametric Center of Excellence for the U.S. Canada and the Caribbean. I was also

2:00.0

alternative risk transfer leader, so I had a

...

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