Pitney Bowes Develops Wildfire Risk Software

Pitney Bowes Software has released the Pitney Bowes Risk Data Suite Software Bundle for property and casualty insurers.

The company says this is the first national wildfire software product for the insurance sector. It allows insurers to attribute accurate wildfire risk ratings during the underwriting process to any commercial or private location in the United States.

In practical terms, this means that underwriting calculations can integrate wildfire risk the same way that flood risk is used to develop proper pricing.

The data suite supports cat modeling with fire behavior science provided by Anchor Point Group Fire Management Consultants. It incorporates the vast array of vegetation across the United States, weather history and key geological attributes to help predict how wildfires are fueled and how they might spread.

“For the first time, insurers have the national geospatial data for underwriting wildfire risk across the U.S.,” said John O’Hara, executive vice president and president, Pitney Bowes Software. “We are excited to deliver critical fire science intelligence that will help insurers to more accurately identify, assess and mitigate risk exposure from these catastrophic events.”

Pitney Bowes states that hundreds of millions of policies may be processed in an hour using the product, which is available as software-as-a-service or as an on premise solution. Insurers can use spatial data to assess wildfire risk at a particular location without the need to visualize the data with each location on a map.

The product was released at the RAA’s Cat Modeling 2012 Conference, held Feb. 14-16 in Orlando, Florida. Pitney Bowes Software is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Stamford, Conn.-based Pitney Bowes Inc.