FLOODINSURANCE

“Insuring a high net-worth home is much more than insuring just a home," Brum says. “The clients who own high-value homes often will also have fine jewelry, arts, antique or luxury vehicles, and watercrafts."

“Purchasing excess flood insurance is a prudent move for homeowners with asset values that far exceed the parameters of primary flood coverage, which limits coverage at $250,000, especially if you are in a high-risk flood zone," Rivera adds.

3) Explain how technology is improving the experience. Technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D property data, are becoming dominant features in the underwriting process. The use of drones to create aerial images of risk areas can help carriers and agents identify and manage risks.

“Many insurers are using aerial imagery in their underwriting process to look for surrounding hazards and, more importantly as it relates to flood insurance, be able to identify ground elevations and foundation types, which will likely impact the rate or cost of a flood insurance policy," Brum says.

“Climate change may be out of an insurance company's control; however, utilizing technology and AI to develop accurate catastrophe and flood modeling may be invaluable to an insurer as it will assist carriers in creating new products, increased limits but most importantly, predicting the probability of risks before they occur and mitigating those risks to avoid and reduce the number of casualties," Brum explains.

With technological advances, “carriers are able to remove the unnecessary steps from the underwriting process by streamlining the submission to quote process," says John Stammen, CEO, Convr, an AI company serving commercial insurance organizations. “Whether you're writing flood insurance or any other type of insurance, it's about data and there's more data out there than we can consume."

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Speed and efficiency are key to supporting the underwriting process and AI is emerging as the game-changing technology of the insurance sector. As the use of AI expands, agents and carriers have the ability “to take a submission and pull out the critical elements of data, look at the publicly available data sources in real-time, fuse all that together, and then present to the underwriter answers that pre-qualify a submission," Stammen says.

Here is a collection of findings from recent studies that reveal the true extent of distracted driving in 2023.

The auto insurance market is in distress. Most notably, rates are rising, which is being driven by increases in claims severity and frequency due to inflation, worker shortages and supply chain disruption.

While these factors have cumulated over the past few years, an already prevalent—yet just as impactful—phenomenon continues to impact the auto insurance space: distracted driving. Since April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, here is a collection of findings from recent studies that reveal the true extent of distracted driving in 2023:

4 S T U D I E S T H A T R E V E A L D I S T R A C T E D D R I V I N G I S W O R S E T H A N Y O U T H O U G H T

1) Dog days are here. An overwhelming 91% of drivers who drove with their dog over the past 12 months interacted with them while on the road, according to new data from Selective Insurance. On top of that, nearly half (48%) of drivers admit that they are more distracted when their pet is in the vehicle than when it isn't.

The study also found that in the past 12 months, of drivers who own dogs, more than one-third (36%) gave their dog food, treats, or water while driving; over a quarter (27%) of drivers have taken a photo or video of their pooch; and nearly onequarter (23%) revealed that they held their pet in place all while driving.

While these distractions may seem minimal, almost 1 in 10 drivers (9%) have gotten into a car accident as a result of having their dog in their vehicle, the study found.