Kettle works with Amwins & PartnerRe on California excess wildfire product

Kettle, the reinsurance focused deep-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) company, has delivered risk modelling and analytics to support the development of a new excess wildfire product for the Californian market that has been launched by Amwins and is written by PartnerRe.

Amwins Access, the nationwide binding and brokerage platform of the insurance origination and distribution specialist has launched the Excess Wildfire Product that has been designed to complement a self-insured retention plan or the California FAIR (or a similar) plan.

It’s written in partnership with PartnerRe Insurance Solutions Bermuda Ltd., part of the global reinsurer who is providing excess wildfire coverage, while the tech-focused company Kettle Limited is providing key data analysis, modeling and pricing, helping to match markets with appetite for the risk.

The new single-peril product can offer up to $7 million in excess wildfire coverage for residential dwellings with replacement costs of up to $20 million, Amwins said today.

“Risk placements in wildfire and other CAT-exposed areas remain challenging, with rates and deductibles continuing to climb,” explained Kris Zebratski, senior vice president at Amwins Access. “The situation not only presents capacity challenges, but also adds complexity to the coverage placement process, leaving policyholders exposed to significant losses. Within this dynamic market, we’re excited to join with PartnerRe Insurance Solutions Bermuda Ltd. and Kettle to provide our market partners with profitable results and unparalleled distribution, while also acting as problem solvers for our retail agents, creating innovative products tailored to their unique needs.”

“With the launch of the Excess Wildfire Product, Kettle is proud to expand our partnership with Amwins and PartnerRe Insurance Solutions Bermuda Ltd. to provide a meaningful solution for homeowners in an extremely difficult environment,” added Amit Shah, president of Kettle. “Kettle’s proven modeling technology and analytics give a crucial underwriting edge in a time when catastrophic losses are increasing in both severity and frequency.”

“Wildfires in California remain challenging – most carriers either will not entertain a risk with the exposure, or they’ll exclude the peril entirely,” Joel Livingston, head of Insurance Programs at PartnerRe said. “Thanks to the CatFocus® California Wildfire catastrophe model developed by our research team, we are able to further validate Kettle’s modeling approach and provide a reliable benchmark to price this risk. By combining PartnerRe’s know-how with the expertise of Amwins and the capabilities of Kettle, our tri-party effort is poised to be a true game-changer.”

Kettle uses its proprietary developed machine learning algorithms to analyse, model and price wildfire risk, putting to work more than seven billion lines of weather and ground truth data to determine eligibility for coverage and pricing.

It’s further evidence of advanced technology being utilised to make coverage possible in hard to insure areas, for more challenging catastrophe or weather perils.

Kettle uses its technology to make catastrophe and climate risks more understandable with its advanced technological approach, using machine learning and other techniques to model risks, then establish mechanisms and structures to transfer risks to both traditional and even capital market sources of reinsurance capacity.