Catastrophe preparedness: Aligning policyholders and insurers' interests

Improvements in forecast accuracy have provided governments with significantly better insights into when and where to order an evacuation and urge homes and businesses to board up and leave. (Photo: Carolina K. Smith/Adobe Stock)

You may not have noticed it, but weather forecasts are getting better, particularly for hurricanes. In fact, a modern five-day Atlantic hurricane track forecast is as accurate as a three-day forecast was in the early 2000s. Useful forecasts now reach nine to 10 days into the future.

This has huge societal benefits, especially for the insurance industry when it comes to policyholders taking precautionary action to a landfalling hurricane. There likely is not one C-suite insurance executive that does not browse the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) website daily during a named storm event to observe the National Hurricane Center’s “Cone of Uncertainty.”