With annual insured natural catastrophe losses consistently exceeding $100 billion, the demand for services like McKenzie Intelligence Services’ (MIS) Global Events Observer (GEO) platform is increasing, as it accelerates disaster relief and economic recovery.
In an interview with Reinsurance News, Forbes McKenzie, Founder and CEO of MIS, explained how the firm combines global data sources, AI, and military/NATO-trained analysts to deliver accurate and detailed digital representations of global risks quickly from a single platform.
McKenzie noted, “Following an event, relevant data from sources such as satellite, aerial imagery, radar, drones, mobile phone data, social media, and sensors is assessed by the intelligence team, and in-depth reports are subsequently produced.
“Using our disaster-response platform, the GEO, MIS uploads our clients’ reports and overlays them on the relevant locations with client data, covering potential exposure, likely incoming claims, based on the cause of loss and policy terms, with building-level damage assessments.”
MIS’ approach helps insurers avoid the costs and complexities of evaluating, interpreting, and purchasing data on their own.
It also enables teams to make proactive, data-driven decisions, such as setting aside adequate reserves and responding quickly to support affected policyholders.
McKenzie also discussed the motivation behind developing a new AI damage classifier for the GEO platform and its benefits for clients.
“We recognised that Machine Learning, in particular, was well suited to support our already advanced damage assessment capabilities, especially in terms of speed and area covered. Given that our focus is always on providing insurers with the most accurate and detailed information in as little time as possible following an event, it was clear that this could help to speed up response processes even more,” he said.
“AI can be trained to focus on very specific parameters with processing power that can analyse a huge amount of data in a short timeframe. This meant that we could support our expert analysts to work on multiple events simultaneously or help them to tackle larger events more quickly and comprehensively,” he continued.
Despite the advantages of AI, McKenzie noted that human intelligence often surpasses AI in terms of accuracy.
Therefore, the AI technology within the GEO platform is designed to complement, not replace, the MIS intelligence team. The platform combines AI’s speed and processing power with the team’s expertise to ensure accurate model assessments.
McKenzie added, “It’s important to note that our Machine Learning approach to AI ensured that everything we did to train the model, especially in terms of accuracy, was rooted in traditional methods for damage assessments, rather than totally replacing them.”
During the interview, McKenzie also commented on the importance of multi-peril damage assessments and how the GEO platform augments this. He stressed that insurers need a comprehensive view of an event’s impact to ensure their response is based on the most accurate and detailed data.
Complex policy definitions can lead to coverage gaps for certain perils, which can be problematic and even litigious. For example, hurricanes can cause damage from both wind and flooding; however, many policyholders, especially in the US, may be covered for wind damage but not for flooding.
“Providing multi-peril assessments therefore enables us to give clients all the information they need to determine the validity of individual claims,” said McKenzie.
He continued, “Once the situation is accurately understood, clients can quickly make calls on claims, even before First Notice of Loss (FNOL) with full confidence, saving time and money whilst supporting affected customers. GEO augments this by acquiring the relevant datasets around things like wind speed, storm surge, rainfall, etc., and applying them to the relevant in-force client locations.
“Following this data join, a subsequent assessment from the MIS intelligence team highlights where damage is present and which peril that damage is attributed to. This is then further integrated with the client’s data to provide actionable insights around the effects of multiple perils from a single event.”
McKenzie also shared specific examples of how the GEO platform has reduced costs and improved claims efficiency for its clients.
After the devastating wildfires in Hawaii in August 2023, an initial report with high-resolution imagery was available on GEO within 48 hours. A detailed building-level damage assessment followed shortly, covering nearly 3,000 properties.
“This helped our insurance clients accelerate their claims processes, and often without the need for resource-intensive adjusters, which was a major issue at the time. We supported timely economic relief for those in need following Hawaii’s second-costliest natural disaster on record,” explained McKenzie.
Another example was the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria in February 2023. Within 12 hours, GEO provided a detailed heatmap of the affected areas, pinpointing insured buildings and assessing the likely extent of damage to insured properties.
“Using GEO enabled these insurers, including our client Zurich, to quickly secure local resources, prepare local claims team to respond to the event, and make payments to affected policyholders on the same day, ahead of FNOL. I am very proud of that, as it was a particularly difficult situation on the ground,” McKenzie noted.
McKenzie revealed that MIS has seen increasing interest in its services due to the growing frequency and severity of natural catastrophes and other events.
He emphasised that MIS is committed to supporting both current and potential clients with their event response processes: “Further, at MIS we are fully committed to supporting our highly valued clients, which is why we use our specialist team to continue to develop GEO to meet their evolving needs. To this end, we are investing in creating new features based on our deep understanding of the market, and our clients’ challenges.
“We are incredibly proud of the fact we’ve been successful in retaining many clients year-on-year whilst adding new ones, including outside of the Lloyd’s market. This is proving to us that GEO continues to be an integral and valuable part of the market’s event response process.”
To conclude, McKenzie said, “Today, we are trusted by Lloyd’s and many of the world’s leading insurers. With a clear and unique value offering (that is only set to improve even further), we will continue to play a key role in enhancing event response for our clients to help them navigate an increasingly unpredictable future.”
The post Growing need for MIS’ GEO amid rising nat cat losses: Forbes McKenzie appeared first on ReinsuranceNe.ws.