US insurer Liberty Mutual and Floodbase, a platform specializing in flood risk solutions, have launched an instant quote app for parametric flood reinsurance in the US.
The tool enables wholesale and retail brokers to price parametric flood coverage in minutes, streamlining a traditionally complex and time-consuming process.
By integrating Liberty Mutual’s pricing engine with the Floodbase platform’s API, the solution delivers the speed, consistency and efficiency needed to serve the small and mid-sized commercial insurance market.
Parametric flood products have matured and now support large-area policies that transfer the risk of economic loss globally, including covering U.S. cities, Colombian farmers, and a nationwide real estate portfolio in Italy.
As flood events become more frequent and severe in the United States, and National Flood Insurance Program premiums continue to rise, parametric flood insurance is increasingly viewed as a valuable complement to traditional property insurance, including protection against non-damaging business interruption losses.
Despite growing demand, private market capacity still lags behind U.S. flood risk, with two-thirds of model losses underinsured. Where previous limitations were primarily related to basis risk and product standardization, today the main obstacle is scalable distribution.
The new Instant Quotation application solves this challenge by allowing brokers and managing general agents to integrate large-area parametric flood products into automated quoting and rating workflows.
With a variety of optimized structuring and pricing options, the tool makes policy quoting simple, positioning simple and easy to trade, allowing parametric flood insurance to be distributed effectively in the small and medium commercial market, rather than being limited to complex bespoke arrangements.
Jean-Christophe Garaix, head of parametric and agriculture at Liberty Mutual, commented: “This collaboration allows us to respond to changing flood risks with faster, more adaptable solutions. The same coverage, just delivered faster and with less friction, allowing brokers to effectively explore and customize a client’s flood coverage in seconds, even before sending an email to the underwriter. Not only does this improve the customer and distribution experience, it also allows us to respond to changing flood risks with novel parametric products in the small and mid-sized market segment.” “
Floodbase co-founder and CEO Bessie Schwarz added: “Parametric flooding can be an effective risk management tool that bridges the protection gap of traditional policies for small and medium-sized businesses in the United States, but this requires rapid distribution at scale.”
“Liberty’s new instant parametric flood quoting solution solves this problem, giving U.S. brokers and MGAs the flexibility to embed rapid parametric flood overlays into their own quoting environments, enabling scalable distribution across small and mid-sized market segments.”