Property Claims Services (PCS), a Verisk Analytics business, is now offering county-level resolution for U.S catastrophe events with insured losses of at least $1 billion.
The enhanced level of granularity is available for immediate use 
and will also be applied retrospectively to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, along with five other events from 2017 and 2018, after their next resurveys.
PCS will now be able to provide re/insurers with more accurate loss estimates for tropical storm events, as well as severe convective and winter storms, which often have significant concentrations by county, and which reach the $1 billion level more frequently than they did in the past.
Rather than modelling to county level, which has impeded previous attempts to enhance catastrophe estimates, PCS has increased its granularity by collecting re/insurers’ projected ultimate loss and claim count estimates at the county level.
Tom Johansmeyer, cohead of PCS, commented on the announcement: “When I first began working with PCS, the market was quite vocal about the need for real county-level estimates in the United States, particularly for catastrophe-prone states like Texas and Florida. Since then, demand for such granularity has increased profoundly.”
“At the same time, the catastrophe landscape has evolved,” Johansmeyer continued. “Large events aren’t limited to Gulf wind and California earthquake. Texas hail events now regularly exceed US$1 billion, and winter storms have also reached that threshold.”
“That’s why PCS decided to take a national view of county level from the start. We sought to develop a solution that will meet the market’s needs for years to come—rather than merely focus on immediate concerns.”
Ted Gregory, cohead of PCS, also stated: “Our collaboration partners within the industry are constantly in need of additional tools to assist with assessing and managing their risks. The PCS team is sensitive to these needs and has worked hard to bring this new process and product to fruition.”
PCS currently provides catastrophe industry loss aggregation services for the U.S, Canada, Mexico and Turkey. The company also launched a global specialty lines platform in 2017, which includes nonelemental marine and energy, cyber, and terror.
