Lynx Specialty, an excess and surplus (E&S) insurance program specializing in commercial real estate, has partnered with Property Guardian to support its expansion into wildfire-affected markets.
The arrangement is designed to give Lynx Specialty’s underwriters more precise property-level insights into wildfire risk, allowing the company to consider commercial risks that might otherwise be excluded under broader screening criteria.
“Property Guardian increases our visibility into parcel-level risk, not just regional-level risk, which increases our confidence in where to deploy capacity,” commented Kiley O’Connell, CEO and Founder of Lynx Specialty. “In areas hit by wildfires, it allows us to selectively tilt – supporting our brokers to take appropriate risks while maintaining the discipline our operator partners expect.”
The use of detailed wildfire risk reports provides a more comprehensive view than standard risk scores, incorporating factors such as exposure, potential severity, mitigation measures and suppression dynamics for individual properties and surrounding areas. Lynx Specialty says this approach supports more informed underwriting decisions, allowing cases that might previously have been considered marginal to be assessed with greater clarity and supported by detailed analysis.
John Dunn, senior vice president of corporate sales at Property Guardian, added: “We are seeing more and more forward-thinking MGAs like Lynx recognizing that exposure to wildfire does not make a property uninsurable, but rather deserves expert attention.”
“The market is filled with well-maintained, well-located properties that others are rejecting simply because they are located in areas widely considered to be at risk for wildfires. Our platform enables Lynx to clearly identify these opportunities and provide documentation to defend these decisions with confidence.”
Lynx Specialty positions the partnership as part of a broader shift in the specialty real estate industry, in which managing general agents are moving beyond broad disaster avoidance and instead employing more granular analytics to support measurable growth in wildfire-prone areas.
By incorporating this capability into its underwriting process, Lynx Specialty aims to provide brokers with commercial real estate risk capabilities that may otherwise be denied.