Wind-related loss severity has increased significantly in recent years as storm behavior shifts, housing stock ages, and repair costs escalate. For homeowners insurers, these trends are exposing the limits of traditional wind risk assessment tools—many of which were never designed to operate in today’s environment of heightened volatility.

Legacy approaches often rely on broad geographic assumptions to estimate wind peril. While useful at a high level, these methods fail to capture the property-specific factors that actually drive loss outcomes, such as roof condition, structural design, surrounding environment, and localized weather behavior. As a result, underwriting and pricing teams face growing challenges around consistency, portfolio stability, and confidence in risk segmentation.

Even determining whether a home warrants further inspection can be difficult without reliable, address-level insight. As wind losses continue to rise, carriers need more precise tools to understand what is truly driving exposure, and how to act on it.

A more granular path forward

To meet this need, Verisk introduced LOCATION® Wind, a property-level Wind Risk Score built on a generalized linear model (GLM) that isolates wind risk from other perils. By focusing specifically on wind-related loss drivers, LOCATION Wind provides a clearer view of how individual property characteristics influence expected loss.

The model incorporates a wide range of inputs that traditional approaches often overlook, including:

• Roof performance and resilience, accounting for age, condition, and material characteristics
• Structural characteristics, such as roof complexity and finished living area
• Surrounding environment, including vegetation and proximity to nearby structures
• Localized weather and climate patterns that influence wind exposure

With a single address, insurers can access a comprehensive assessment of wind exposure and expected loss potential. The model’s predictive strength is maintained through continually refreshed data, allowing it to adapt as both environmental conditions and the built environment evolve.

Why precision matters more than ever

As storm activity becomes less predictable and housing stock continues to age, insurers can no longer rely on regional averages to understand wind peril. The consequences of imprecise risk assessment are becoming increasingly clear:

• Elevated portfolio volatility
• Greater difficulty establishing eligibility and segmentation guidelines
• Increased uncertainty around pricing adequacy
• Challenges identifying properties that require further review or mitigation

A property-level Wind Risk Score helps narrow the gap between predicted and observed losses, giving carriers greater confidence in their underwriting and pricing decisions. By reducing uncertainty, insurers can make more consistent, defensible choices across their portfolios.

The bottom line

LOCATION Wind delivers a modern, property-specific approach to wind risk assessment—bringing clarity, consistency, and confidence to underwriting and pricing strategies as managing wind peril becomes more complex.

Learn how LOCATION Wind can help homeowners insurers build greater portfolio stability and sharper risk differentiation.