The use of satellite imaging by the re/insurance industry is gaining pace, and international satellite company ICEYE is working with a growing number of industry players to provide them with rapid insights into natural catastrophes.

Most recently it has entered a pilot scheme with Sweden-headquartered If P&C Insurance to use its Flood Insights product.

“We are keen to support If P&C Insurance in their efforts to ensure they are best positioned to respond to the demands of an increasingly flood-exposed world,” said Rafal Modrzewski, chief executive officer & co-founder of ICEYE.

“ICEYE’s rapid-response data capabilities and ability to monitor floods with accuracy and consistency enable insurers to quickly and efficiently size losses, allocate resources effectively, and deliver a more customer-centric claims process.”

ICEYE’s data and insights enable users to gain rapid situational awareness of any flood event globally. High resolution flood imagery is captured via ICEYE’s proprietary synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation and combined with auxiliary information, including elevation models, ground sensors and river gauges, to generate flood extent and depth insights within 24 hours of a flood’s peak.

If P&C Insurance will use the data produced to support data-driven claims-handling processes for flood-related losses and proactively respond to customer needs during an event. The accurate sizing of flood losses will support better understanding of potential financial impacts and reserve setting for events.

“One of the known megatrends is global climate change. We at If want to seek new innovative ways to be on top of this development and increase our ability to be by our customer’s side,” said Tuomas Räikkönen, head of large & international claims at If P&C.

“ICEYE provides a great example of technology-enabled and data-driven services that can be embedded into the more traditional claims-handling services.”

The view from space

This is just one application of ICEYE’s insights. The company, which now employs 500 people, has 21 satellites in orbit. It provides services or satellites to governments around the world, including the US government and, as has been reported, the Ukraine government.

ICEYE started out scrutinising Arctic ice so a focus on climate change has been in its blueprint from the beginning. Benefits of satellite insights include improved, automated claims processing, fraud prevention, the ability to validate and process property damage claims remotely, more efficient deployment of loss adjusters and the ability to establish causation.

Modrzewski highlighted the potential for satellite insights to draw more capital into the re/insurance industry through the creation of parametric products.

“In the current market environment there is more risk than we have capital,” he said. “The question is, how can we convince more investors, especially around natural catastrophes, to put money in the market and create new products based on those new triggers? It’s definitely a way to open an opportunity.”

ICEYE’s first product for the industry was Flood Insights, which has been followed by a fire product, and a wind product is in the pipeline. The products enable event prediction, measurement of the impact in real time, and analysis of the data to drive better underwriting in the future.

“Our intent is to have a comprehensive portfolio of products focused on natural catastrophes,” said Modrzewski.

On the industry’s current approach to these risks, he said: “We are in a learning process, and I can see the industry is very active in trying to do it. The most important thing that has happened is people have recognised that the problem is there, that we need to do more to understand the risk of natural catastrophes, and we need to do more to monitor them as they happen.

“The question is, what’s the best way of doing that? That’s what industry is still trying to figure out.”

A busy year

It has been a landmark year for ICEYE. In January this year, it launched two new SAR satellites into orbit. The launch included the first satellite built, licensed and operated by ICEYE US. Both satellites were launched on the SpaceX Transporter-3 smallsat rideshare mission with Exolaunch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

ICEYE has now deployed 16 satellites since 2018, including commercial and dedicated customer missions.

“Expanding our fleet is an important step in better serving our global customers and empowering our advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence relating to SAR technologies,” said Modrzewski at the time.

“The new satellites add essential capability to the ICEYE constellation which translates to additional solutions and deeper analytics for our customers.”

In November 2021, ICEYE US announced it had joined a cooperative research and development agreement with the US Army’s Space and Missile Defense Technical Center to advance state-of-the-art Earth observation technology in support of US Army missions.