Why 2026 Severe Storm Losses Are Set Before the Storm Forms
Severe storm losses don't begin when a storm materializes. They're shaped earlier — by underwriting and renewal decisions, by the quality of underlying property data, and by how risk accumulates across a portfolio over time. A new ZestyAI on-demand session, featuring Robert Silva, ACAS (formerly Farmers Insurance) and Keren Chheang, FCAS (formerly Wawanesa), examines the upstream patterns driving 2026 severe convective storm (SCS) outcomes — and where traditional CAT models are diverging most sharply from realized loss.
About this session: Loss Happens Before the Storm: The New Drivers of 2026 Severe Storm Risk is an on-demand webinar covering why storm losses vary dramatically within the same ZIP code, what three record SCS years (2023: $66B, 2024: $59B, 2025: $51B) reveal about portfolio volatility, and the underwriting and pricing decisions carriers are making now. Featuring Robert Silva, ACAS, and Keren Chheang, FCAS.
Prefer to watch instead? Access the full on-demand session → — includes property-level signals, CAT model gaps, and live Q&A.
When are 2026 severe storm losses actually being set?
Earlier than most carriers price for. Once a storm forms, the loss outcome on any given property is largely determined by conditions that were locked in months or years before: roof age and condition, the property characteristics the carrier underwrote on (or didn't), the renewal decision made at the last anniversary, and the aggregate exposure the portfolio quietly accumulated through prior cycles. The storm is the trigger. The loss was already set up.
That's the framing shift behind this session. Carriers that treat storm season as the moment exposure crystallizes consistently arrive too late to influence the loss outcome.
Why are traditional CAT models misaligned with realized loss?
Because the gaps that drive loss aren't event-driven, they're data-driven. Traditional CAT models work at a level of geographic and structural abstraction that smooths over property-level variability — roof age, prior weathering, soft-metal exposure, structural state. When the building stock is uniform, that abstraction works. When it isn't — and three record years of accumulated damage mean it isn't — the modeled loss and the realized loss diverge. Carriers feel this as adverse surprise in seasons the model didn't flag.
What upstream decisions actually drive portfolio-level storm outcomes?
Four levers, in roughly the order they take effect:
- Underwriting data quality. The accuracy, coverage, and consistency of property-level information at the point of underwriting sets the ceiling for every downstream decision.
- Rating and segmentation choices. Whether structural signals — roof age, condition, prior loss exposure — are priced into the rate, or smoothed into a territory average.
- Renewal decisions. Whether deteriorating properties are repriced, repositioned, or non-renewed before the next season, or carried at the prior year's terms.
- Portfolio accumulation. Whether risk is concentrating in degraded properties or in better-conditioned ones across the book.
Each of these decisions happens long before a storm forms. Each shapes how much loss any future storm will produce.
How do property-level signals change underwriting and renewal decisions?
Property-level signals — roof condition, accumulated weathering, prior structural exposure — let carriers segment risk before it shows up as a claim. The session walks through how carriers are using this layer of intelligence to inform underwriting decisions, calibrate rating plans against structural realities the territory map can't see, and identify properties that quietly migrated from "acceptable" to "deteriorated" since the last renewal. The point isn't to write less business. It's to know which business is changing before the storm reveals it.
What this means for 2026 storm strategy
As the 2026 season takes shape, many of the loss outcomes carriers will record this year are already being set — through underwriting decisions being made now, through renewal terms being finalized, through portfolio accumulation patterns that won't be visible until they show up as concentrated loss. The session is built for product, underwriting, pricing, portfolio, actuarial, CAT, and reinsurance teams shaping how their organization shows up before the first storm forms.
Watch the full session on demand
Loss Happens Before the Storm: The New Drivers of 2026 Severe Storm Risk →
Featuring Robert Silva, ACAS (formerly Farmers Insurance) and Keren Chheang, FCAS (formerly Wawanesa), the session goes deeper on CAT model divergence, the four upstream loss drivers, and what differentiated underwriting can move on 2026 portfolio outcomes.
