​Previsico

Cohort: Cohort 4, 2020 

Focus in insurance value chain/workflow: Risk mitigation  

Specific lines of business supported: Personal I Corporate I SME  

Founded: 2019 

Status: Operating, still in insurance 

Company type: Data provider  

Head office: United Kingdom 

Main global offices: United Kingdom 

Locations served: United Kingdom, USA 

Employee count: 11-100 

Previsico provides real-time, property-level surface water and ordinary watercourse flood forecasts using proprietary modelling software and sensors. The company’s flood warnings are updated every three hours and provide a 48-hour outlook. This information can be used to warn policyholders so that they can put preventative and mitigation measures in place to help limit losses. 

Primary way aimed to improve insurance processes and tools whilst in the Accelerator: New sources of risk insight - data or models  

During the Lab Previsico designed a tool, with the help of the Lloyd’s market, which gives insurers the ability to alert clients of imminent risks, down to an individual property level (25m), so they can move valuables to higher ground and set up temporary flood defences in the case of a forthcoming flood. This fed into a major and ongoing contract with Liberty Specialty Markets, the company’s mentor in the Accelerator, and provided the building blocks to meeting and working with other insurers. 

Using historic Lloyd’s loss data Previsico was able to determine that their alerts could have a typical reduction in losses of around 50% but possibly up to 100%. This was for households, commercial properties and fine art and specie. The degree of loss reduction depended on the type of asset (moveable or unmovable) and if they combined an alert with a flood action plan and/or resilience measures.