Verisk has partnered with mortgage analytics firm RiskSpan to create a solution for measuring and mitigating the risks of climate change to the housing finance industry.
The collaboration will enable RiskSpan’s Edge Platform for mortgage analytics and Verisk Extreme Event Solutions’ proven set of models to assess the risk from natural catastrophes and climate to a given location by providing a property-specific hazard risk metric.
Janet Jozwik, the managing director heading up RiskSpan’s contribution to the new partnership said: “Verisk’s ground-up approach to property-specific risk analysis is the perfect complement to our loan-level approach to mortgage credit and prepayment modelling.
“We are excited to layer Verisk’s unique property risk scoring into our existing credit and portfolio risk framework.”
“Our collaboration with RiskSpan will serve to greatly benefit the housing finance industry by adding critical data and analytics from Verisk’s catastrophe models during the loan screening process,” noted Roger Grenier, senior vice president of Verisk’s global resilience practice.
“This added layer of portfolio management can help banks and financial institutions better understand the potential risk from extreme weather events to a given property.”
The risk to the housing finance industry from extreme events is significant. According to Verisk, 62 million residential locations are at moderate to extreme risk of flooding alone.
Bernadette Kogler, chief executive officer, RiskSpan commented: “We are thrilled to bring the powerful climate and hazard risk analytics of Verisk to our clients.
“This alliance opens the door to a world of property-level data from the insurance industry that can have tremendous value for applications in the mortgage space.”
Bill Churney, president, Verisk’s Extreme Event Solutions unit added: “The collaborative solution will bring together the best extreme event models, data and climate analytics to the mortgage finance industry.
“With financial institutions facing increased pressure to factor climate risk into their decision making, we expect RiskSpan’s enhanced tools powered by Verisk to be a welcome addition to their risk management process.”
