It’s been a busy year at FloodFlash! We’ve grown our GWP and team, moved into a new office, and broken our claims records. We’ve also sold our first policies in the U.S., the largest flood insurance market in the world. If you’re reading this, you’ve almost certainly played a part in these successes, so thanks for supporting us as we continue to grow. Read on for the full 2022 FloodFlash round up.

January:

January is a time to try new things and set goals for the year. With significant growth planned, we wanted to set core FloodFlash values. We settled on the following: own the outcome, use evidence, be helpful, and be brave. Since January, our values have been incorporated into our interview process. We ask every candidate how they’ve showcased our values in their previous experiences.

Like the sound of our values? We’re hiring – check out more details here.

February:

With our values ready and growth plans in place, we announced our Series A raise in February. The $15m raise was led by Buoyant Ventures, alongside Munich Re Ventures, Sony Financial Ventures/Global Brain, MS&AD Ventures and PropTech1 all participating in the round. Pentech, Local Globe and Insurtech Gateway also continued their role as investors.

Real solutions are needed to address flood risk in the communities on the front lines of climate change. We are thrilled to lead this first-class syndicate of investors and believe strongly that the FloodFlash team is well positioned for global expansion and success.”

Amy Francetic, Partner at Buoyant Ventures

February also gave us a chance to showcase our award-winning rapid claims. We pay most of our claims in under 48 hours. During Storm Franklin we paid out one claim in just 5 hours and 36 minutes, breaking our own catastrophic flood claim payment record.

March:

In March, we launched our annual Commercial Risk Report. This year was our biggest yet. Through the report, we aim to raise awareness of the flood risk facing 26% of commercial properties in Britain. Take a look at the five key statistics you should know here.

FloodFlash and the 2022 Commercial Risk Report received praise from both the main parliamentary parties, including from Matt Eastwood MP and Emma Hardy MP.

The FloodFlash Risk Report is welcome and needed. Businesses need a detailed and up-to-date picture of the risks they face from flooding, so that their understanding of the risks from flooding matches their perceptions.

Emma Hardy MP

March also saw another broken record. This time, it was monthly GWP – a record we later broke in September, and then again in November. Finally, we picked up Best Insurtech and Best Customer Experience in a Crisis at the UK Customer Service Excellence Awards 2022. We were particularly proud of the latter following our surge of February claims.

April:

April involved crossing the Atlantic to attend RIMS in San Francisco. The U.S. is home to the biggest flood underinsurance problem worldwide. With the U.S. planned as the first site of international expansion, RIMS offered the first opportunity to meet some of the 400 companies and 10,000 attendees present.

We also unveiled the first part of our latest product feature – smart quote. For clients who haven’t flooded before, setting trigger depths and payouts can be difficult. We created smart quote to help these clients and their brokers, by helping them understand the right cover for them.

Smart quote is a paradigm shift in mass market parametric insurance.

Adam Rimmer, CEO

Part one involved a change to our quote form, including a few more questions about the client’s property. These included asking if the client had resilience measures, and what the property was built from. With the answers to these questions, brokers could understand their client’s property in more detail, meaning they were better equipped to talk them through their trigger depths and payout amounts.

May:

In May, the broker success and marketing teams headed up to Manchester for BIBA. After the event was cancelled in 2020 and online in 2021, it was destined to be a large event. It did not disappoint. With over 5000 brokers and more than 200 exhibitors, reunions were made and new connections forged.

June:

In June, we launched the second part of our new product feature, smart quote. While part one aimed to help brokers understand their client’s property in more detail, part two aimed to use that information to provide an initial tailored quote for the client. It also involved showing insights specific to the client’s property, to ensure the client is as informed as possible when choosing their trigger depths and payouts. Check out our article here that explains it all. Product, development, analytics, broker success and comms all contributed to this new feature – set to change how people interact with parametric insurance.

June also welcomed a smart change of scenery, as we moved offices to cope with the increasing numbers at FloodFlash HQ. With the help of our wonderful Office and People Manager Zara (and some willing volunteers embodying our ‘be helpful’ value!) the move went smoothly. You can now find us at 18 East Tenter Street, near Aldgate station.

July:

July brought warmer weather and several awards. We were named in the Fintech50, and Broker Success Manager Ola was named as one of Insurance Business UK’s Rising Stars. We were also honoured to be awarded a 5-Star Diversity, Equity and Inclusion award.

In general, diversity and inclusion in the UK insurance sector is aesthetic and without any real action. It’s really necessary to encourage the emergence of diverse young champions who are not afraid to push for change.

Ola Jacob, Broker Success Manager

August:

In August, we saw record temperatures of over 40°C in parts of the UK, followed by flash flooding. August also saw the FloodFlash summer party – a chance for the team to let our hair down and get competitive in a range of sports day-style games.

September:

September saw the launch of our first ever Autumn Digest, with articles written by several members of the team. The Digest covered how FloodFlash can help with the rising premiums and excesses many brokers and their clients are seeing.

The team travelled far and wide in September. Co-founders Adam and Ian travelled to Las Vegas for InsurTech Connect, while Catastrophe Risk Analyst Henry (and the sensor) ventured to Paris for the Weather Risk Management Association Conference.

Finally, September saw the analytics team putting the final tweaks together for the US pricing methodology. As well as being much larger than the U.K., the U.S. data availability is more sparse, making harder to model. The pricing methodology is what defines how we price quotes, meaning it’s critical for our expansion to the U.S. We map out every single property in both the U.K. and U.S., making quote submission a lot easier for brokers and their clients. This also means our pricing more accurately reflects the risk at an individual property.

October:

October marked our last hire of the year. 2022 saw 12 hires across almost all departments, marking a huge growth in the team. Mano, Matt, and Kamran all joined our analytics and pricing team in the first quarter of 2022, while Tom, Mital and Jen joined the product team. Gabriel brought experience to the development team as Senior Backend Developer, Kirsty joined the marketing team while Justine and Joel both joined as Broker Success Executives. Finally, Tim joined as our Head of Finance, and Mark became our first hire in the U.S. as CEO, North America.

With Mark signalling our expansion to the U.S., October also saw the dev team finalise some key changes to make FloodFlash ready for the U.S. The dev team are responsible for a lot of work behind the scenes, including the significant updates to the portal so it can handle inches as well as metres, and dollars as well as pounds.

Finally in October, Business Cloud announced their InsurTech 50. The list names the 50 most innovative UK insurance tech firms, and we were thrilled be #2.

November:

Remember back in February when we broke our record for fastest-claim? That wasn’t the end of the story. In November, we paid a claim in 3 hours and 50 minutes. That’s 4 hours between water hitting the client’s trigger depth to their full payout being in their bank.

Our mission is to help more people recover from catastrophe. A fast payout is critical to helping businesses recover and rebuild after a flood. But don’t just take our word for it. Take a look at what some of our Storm Franklin claimants had to say earlier in the year about the impact of a fast claim.

December:

We’ve delved into many of our achievements during this round-up, but sometimes it pays to look at the bigger picture. 40% of businesses close after a catastrophic flood. We’re proud that all of the businesses we’ve paid have recovered, often within days of their flood. Our rapid payouts are a huge part of this.

Finally, this year’s round-up wouldn’t be complete without a mention of our 15-foot Christmas tree. Straight from co-founder Ian’s family Christmas tree farm, the tree involved our values ‘own the outcome’ and ‘be helpful’ when it came to getting it inside our office.

What a year – thanks to everyone involved in 2022. We’ve got no plans on slowing down in 2023. Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter to stay up to date, and sign up here for our newsletter.