MapInfo Launches RiskDataInfo

MapInfo Corp. announced the availability of RiskDataInfo, a comprehensive data set of weather and natural hazards for its Insurance Decision Solution Suite (IDSS), the company’s industry-leading insurance visualization solution.

Now, insurance companies and reinsurers can visually analyze and consider the potential impact of weather and other natural hazards in relation to a specific location. RiskDataInfo allows insurance carriers and reinsurers to consider comprehensive historical data on hail storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados and wind storms, to make more informed decisions on risk exposure, allowing reduced costs and enhanced profitability.

Traditionally, if an insurance company wanted information on natural forces or weather patterns that could potentially affect a customer, it would need to work with a third-party vendor to create a complete catastrophe modeling solution. Besides being costly, from $25,000 to $250,000, the process to create a catastrophe modeling solution can be extremely lengthy, taking anywhere from six months to three years to complete.

Now, with MapInfo’s IDSS and RiskDataInfo, insurance carriers can create their own “what-if scenarios” to forecast and analyze potential risk from the impact of an earthquake or weather-related event such as a hurricane or tornado, MapInfo said in a statement. While no one can predict where or when a natural disaster may occur, IDSS coupled with this historical weather and disaster-related data, enables insurance carriers to make informed, cost-effective decisions based on knowledge of past incidents.