Moody's RMS: Catastrophe Data for Climate Change Preparation
Digital risk processing platform Cytora has begun an integration partnership with Moody's RMS, a catastrophe risk modeling firm, to enhance insurance underwriters' ability to assess climate and natural disaster risks.
The partnership connects Moody's RMS Location Intelligence API, which provides catastrophe peril data across 100 countries, with Cytora's risk processing platform.
The integration aims to speed up risk assessment processes for property and casualty (P&C) insurers.
Michael Richitelli, Managing Director of Global Insurance Sales at Moody's, says: "The changing catastrophe risk landscape means it's more important than ever for insurers to accurately assess the impact of catastrophe risk as part of the risk selection and pricing process.
"By leveraging the same rich science that underpins our probabilistic models, Location Intelligence ensures that quality analytics are being used early in the underwriting process."
Context of the market
Insurance claims from natural catastrophes have exceeded US$100bn annually for four consecutive years, highlighting the increasing pressure on insurers to improve their risk assessment capabilities.
This integration will allow insurers to incorporate climate risk data into underwriting decisions.
“Natural and manmade catastrophes, influenced by a changing climate, are bringing a huge range of difficult challenges to the insurance industry that are only going to grow"
Cytora's platform processes incoming insurance risks by digitising submissions, adding external data and routing them through automated or manual underwriting systems.
The partnership with Moody's RMS adds catastrophe modelling capabilities to this process.
Integration of technology
The combined solution enables insurers to use catastrophe risk data across multiple business lines, including risk clearance and onboarding.
The system integrates with existing insurance workflows from initial submission through to quote generation.
This partnership marks an expansion of Cytora's data ecosystem. The firm also announced a collaboration with global insurer Chubb and launched an enhancement to its platform that uses Large Language Models (LLMs) - machine learning systems trained on text data - alongside its proprietary artificial intelligence.
Richard Hartley, CEO and Co-founder of Cytora, says: “Natural and manmade catastrophes, influenced by a changing climate, are bringing a huge range of difficult challenges to the insurance industry that are only going to grow.
“Unchecked, customers face soaring reinsurance costs and even the prospect of becoming uninsurable. The insurtech industry can play a vital role in helping insurers overcome these challenges.”
A deep dive into Cytora
Cytora was founded in 2014 by Richard Hartley and Aeneas Wiener, emerging from research at the University of Cambridge.
The company specialises in using artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve commercial insurance underwriting processes.
A key milestone came in 2017 when it raised £4.4m (US$5.5m) in funding from investors including Cambridge Innovation Capital.
This was followed by a significant Series A round in 2019, raising £25m (US$31.4m) led by EQT Ventures, with participation from Parkwalk and several existing investors.
The company has developed a risk digitisation platform that helps commercial insurers automate underwriting decisions and improve risk assessment.
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