“Extreme weather events are happening with greater severity and frequency,” said Megan Kuczynski (pictured), founder and CEO of ClimateTech Connect. For insurers and reinsurers, the consequences are immediate. California wildfires and severe convective storms across the US made the first half of 2025 the second costliest on record, according to Swiss Re and Munich Re. Risk models built on historical data are falling short in the face of today’s climate volatility.
This breakdown has accelerated the shift toward real-time technologies. Tools like AI, geospatial analytics, and dynamic climate data are no longer optional. They’re becoming foundational to how carriers assess risk and price policies.
“Technology, the ones that you just cited and the ones that are emerging, are really critical to precision underwriting,” said Kuczynski.
She pointed to Swiss Re’s CatNet, which recently integrated more advanced flood modeling via its acquisition of UK-based firm Fathom. “They plug in the more advanced flood modeling into their solution,” she said. “And I think you're going to see a lot of that happening with the partnerships and the solutions providers.”
What’s changing isn’t just the tools themselves, but the expertise behind them. “They're former hydrologists and they really know their stuff,” said Kuczynski, referring to Fathom’s team. “Tapping into that expertise to add in and plug into these different models… is a trend we're going to be seeing more and more of.”
As reinsurers pull back from high-risk markets, capital allocation strategies are getting a tech-driven overhaul.
Kuczynski highlighted First Street Foundation’s recent partnership with the Connecticut Insurance Department. The initiative gives every homeowner in the state access to First Street’s property-level climate risk data - a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership aimed at improving transparency.
“Every single homeowner and property owner in our state will have access to First Street's data to understand what their risk profile is,” she said.
That level of access not only informs consumers - it influences reinsurer risk appetites and capital deployment. “I think the reinsurers are looking at capital allocations to those types of initiatives,” Kuczynski said.
She also pointed to regulatory examples like Alabama’s roofing grant program, where state funds help homeowners harden properties against severe weather. These programs are shaping how reinsurers evaluate chronic exposure and where they’re willing to place bets.
NOAA data remains foundational to many climate models. So the federal government’s pullback on certain datasets has raised serious alarms.
“There is a private sector initiative to take over… or partner with NOAA to make sure that those data sets are preserved,” said Kuczynski. While she did not name the effort, she confirmed its active development.
The stakes are high. Many startups and established carriers alike rely on NOAA’s baseline data. Losing access - or even delays in updates - could weaken early-stage model development and risk calibration.
“It is a huge problem that needs solving for,” said Kuczynski.
Climate risk isn’t just about sudden-onset events anymore. Slower-moving but systemic risks - like sea level rise, prolonged heatwaves, and infrastructure stress - are beginning to reshape risk frameworks across the board.
“Everything that you cited, just the rising temperatures, are the reason for these growing weather events,” said Kuczynski.
She cited the Connecticut Insurance Department’s recent climate-focused event, which emphasized health impacts on outdoor workers. “That’s a part of the value chain that needs to be addressed,” she said.
In parallel, there’s growing interest in nature-based mitigation strategies. “There’s a much greater emphasis on nature-based solutions,” Kuczynski said, pointing to coral reef restoration and deliberate burns in fire-prone areas as examples. These efforts aren’t just green - they’re increasingly being built into long-term risk assumptions and pricing models.
Insurance has long been built to respond, not prevent. But the pressure to become proactive is mounting.
“It’s a traditionally slow-moving sector in terms of change,” said Kuczynski. “But there was so much focus on the insurance sector and the brokering sector [at Climate Week New York this year] unlike any other year.”
That shift isn’t happening in a vacuum. Kuczynski credited Daniel Kanuski, Marsh McLennan’s head of public policy and a former FEMA executive, for framing the moment clearly: “Not one industry can solve in a silo.”
Tech, regulators, insurers, and consumers all have a role - and increasingly, those roles are overlapping. Kuczynski called it “an ecosystem of co-beneficiaries.”
And as more carriers experiment with predictive adaptation and risk prevention tech, that overlap is deepening. One startup to watch, she said, is Fora, which offers property-level risk assessments that insurers use to inform pricing, policy eligibility, and required mitigation steps.
“These are the mitigation actions that you need to do either to get a policy, to get your policy priced a certain way, or not to get a policy at all in super high-risk areas,” she said.
