CatIQ announces enhancements to subscription-based platform in advance of Canada’s approaching CAT season

Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ) is looking to advance the need for real-time information on natural and man-made disasters with its release of the first phases of two new features to its online subscription-based platform.

CatWATCH and Analysis Dashboard seek to enhance the real-time capabilities of the platform, which currently provides information about factors such as geographic footprint, initial bulletin and related media within one to two days, notes a statement from CatIQ, which provides catastrophe or notable event declarations based on estimated property losses.

CatWATCH – the features of which will be rolling out over the next couple of months, starting with CatWATCH Alerts – is being created to provide updates on possible CATs being monitored by the company.

Subscribers will have access to five different watch types – namely severe weather, tropical storm, flood, forest fire and winter storm – which will include geographic footprints of the areas that may be impacted, information on which perils may occur or are occurring, and possible property damage and preparation related to each watch type.

Having the alerts, coupled with subsequent updates, “prior to a catastrophe occurring, could assist in the mobilization of claims staff, adjusters and emergency management officials or used in policy holder outreach,” CatIQ notes in the statement.

Analysis Dashboard, for its part, will allow participating insurance companies to benchmark themselves with the rest of the industry and monitor trends in CAT loss estimates. In addition, the dashboard “is integrated with data from MSA Research, CatIQ’s sister company, to provide an estimate of the impact of a specific CATs on direct loss ratios,” the statement adds.

Phase 2 of the dashboard, Multi-CAT, is currently under development and will provide reports and analytics for multiple CAT events.

Notification about potential CATs is extremely important as Canada approaches what Carolyn Rennie, CatIQ’s director of catastrophic loss analysis and in-house meteorologist, calls “CAT Season.”

“During consultation with the industry, it became very apparent that advanced warning of impending conditions which may develop into catastrophic events is extremely important,” Rennie reports. “Since we are already tracking events and collecting information in order to make CAT declarations, it makes sense to share this information with our users,” she adds.