Understory Announces National Expansion to Save Insurance Industry Billions

Business Wire

Real-Time, Ground-Truth Weather Data Network to Cover Over 90 Percent of U.S. Weather Catastrophes

MADISON, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Understory, the weather network and analytics company, today announced plans to expand its national coverage to save the insurance industry billions of dollars annually.

“The insurance industry has never been able to access such geospatially-specific data on storm-related events,” said Alex Kubicek, Understory CEO. “Understory is changing the very nature of how insurance companies conduct business.”

Understory currently has 500 stations deployed across five major metropolitan areas and has worked with the insurance industry to analyze over 200,000 policyholders and 8,000 claims. Property and casualty insurance carriers have already seen pathways to over $16 million in savings. With its national expansion, Understory plans to increase its sensor network to 5,000 sensors by the end of 2019. Understory networks will cover regions responsible for over 50 percent of the average annual storm loss and over 90 percent of all weather-related catastrophes.

Understory has launched its on-site claims analysis program, which allows insurance carriers to see how they can find expense savings and indemnity by operationalizing Understory’s data in under 48 hours.

With Understory, hyper-local weather can be understood with resolution and accuracy to streamline operational challenges and economic consequences. The patented technology provides actionable information that radar, satellite and other remote sensing technologies fail to deliver.

“Our networks have proven themselves in even the harshest weather conditions,” said Bryan Dow, Understory co-founder and VP of Deployments. “Our infrastructure is incredibly cost-effective to deploy and creates immense value for our customers. Now is the time to aggressively expand our technology across the U.S.”

During recent severe weather events, Understory provided reliable, ground-truth weather data previously unavailable to insurers. Seventy stations, taking 50,000 measurements per second, captured incredibly granular data during Hurricane Harvey's historic rainfall in Houston – not a single measurement was missed. In a Denver hail storm that caused more than $1.4 billion in damages, Understory captured more data than any other academic, government or research institution. With their unparalleled data, Understory’s technology has secured loss control of 15-30 percent for each weather event.

About Understory

Understory analyzes and processes the data it collects to create real-time datasets, views, and actionable information from historical, current, and forecasted weather events to provide better insight and early detection of risks. Understory’s composite of granular weather data has applications across a variety of markets, including broadcasting, agriculture, forecasting, and risk mitigation. For more information, visit www.understoryweather.com.