As everyone in insurance is aware, hail and tornado losses were extreme last year.  According to Swiss Re, insured losses for tornado and hail damage in the United States reached $14 billion in 2011!  Just this month over 100 tornadoes occurred in one weekend.  So the trend continues, with no end in sight...

RiskMeter's standard Hail report is based upon hail stones 3/4" and larger.  Some people have asked if small hail stones should be included, since they normally don't cause damage.  Our GIS analysts have recently done extensive research on this issue.  The consensus seems to be that hail 1" or larger can damage  automobiles and hail 1½" and larger can cause significant damage to roofs.  We will soon be offering  3 different sizes (hail > 0.75", hail > 1", hail > 1½") as standard options.  We're recommending that based upon what you're underwriting that you contact us to change the hail models that you use.  In addition, we can create custom & state specific scores, and we can put all three on your account.

Additional analysis was performed as well.  When we use only larger hail, there are fewer events, so we have adjusted the hail scores for larger sizes.  The scoring buckets were adjusted so that about the same percentage of the country fell into each bucket.  This will make the scoring consistent regardless of hail size.

For more information, please contact your account executive at 617.737.4444