Driving Growth and Precision in Private Flood Insurance
When Wright Flood entered the private flood insurance market, one of the biggest hurdles was confidence: could a model truly validate against real-world events and support profitable underwriting?
Since adopting KatRisk in 2019, Wright Flood has grown its private flood portfolio while maintaining strong results. The KatRisk flood model consistently validated against major hurricanes like Ian, Helene, and Milton, proving its accuracy and giving Wright Flood the confidence to expand.
Challenge
When Wright Flood began developing a proprietary private flood insurance product in 2019, the team faced a critical question: how to assess and price flood risk with the level of precision needed to compete in a market once thought “uninsurable.”
The models available at the time fell short. Many lacked the resolution required to evaluate risks at the property level, while others were either too costly or too opaque in their assumptions. To expand confidently into private flood, Wright Flood needed a fully probabilistic flood model that combined scientific rigor, affordability, and practical flexibility.
After reviewing the options, they turned to KatRisk.
Solution
KatRisk’s flood model offered Wright Flood exactly what was needed: robust outputs for underwriting and pricing, transparent assumptions, and the flexibility to integrate into day-to-day operations.
The partnership began with a focus on enabling risk selection and pricing at scale. By adopting KatRisk, Wright Flood gained the ability to run precise, property-level analyses without the delays or costs associated with legacy models. This gave underwriters and actuaries more confidence in the business they were writing while ensuring customers received fair, competitive pricing.
Over time, the relationship has grown. Today, Wright Flood uses KatRisk not only for rating but also for portfolio analytics, risk monitoring, and product innovation.
“KatRisk provided the flood risk solutions we needed to expand into the private flood market. We now use KatRisk as both a pricing tool via API and as an underwriting solution.”
Results
Wright Flood’s integration of KatRisk spans across tools and workflows:
- SpatialKat powers monthly portfolio analysis, enabling the team to track diversification, Probable Maximum Loss (PML) growth, and Average Annual Loss (AAL) trends.
- SoloKat provides on-demand, single-risk analysis to support underwriting decisions.
- SoloKat API enables real-time pricing, delivering near-instant quotes to customers. This capability was adopted after early testing showed KatRisk’s outputs closely matched actual results on admitted products.
The measurable improvements have been significant. Wright Flood’s initial admitted product, based on 10x10m grid rating, performed in line with expectations when tested against major hurricanes such as Ian, Helene, and Milton, running at a 43% loss ratio (excluding LAE). Building on this success, the company launched a new product that prices based on exact location rather than grids. Early performance has been even stronger, with the pinpoint-based product running at a 27% loss ratio (excluding LAE) as of July 31, 2025.
“We value risk selection, model updates, as well as timeliness on questions when they arise. We are very pleased with our use of KatRisk within the organization. It’s been a great partnership.”
