Unlocking business value with new sources of climate and property data

At the recent InsTech event, “Beyond Theory: Unlocking Business Value with Complete Digital Risk Flows” in partnership with Google Cloud and Cytora, our CCO Alun Jones and Account Manager Jessica Rowe took the stage to share the story of how Addresscloud has become a major player in the geocoding space in a short space of time. Their panel session, "New Sources of Climate and Property Data," highlighted how Addresscloud has scaled, what’s driving the success, and why partnerships are the secret sauce to keeping things moving forward.

The session kicked off by reflecting on how Addresscloud achieved significant growth without relying on external funding. Alun highlighted how the company was started by themselves whilst emphasising the importance of focusing on a core customer pain point. For Addresscloud, that pain point was geocoding.

"Geocoding was a pain point in 2015, it's a pain point in 2020, and it remains a pain point today."

Addresscloud has dedicated itself to building the best geocoder possible, addressing this specific need for its initial customer. By refining their solution, they expanded the platform to cater to a broader set of customers. Now, Addresscloud’s platform is a critical part of the Flood Re solution for all the insurers in the UK, handling around 200 million transactions per month!

Much of the company’s success is due to early design decisions that prioritised scalability and customer-centricity, underscoring how crucial it is to focus on the problem at hand while building infrastructure that can grow with demand.

"Even though we're a small company, we've been able to scale up and deliver for a big industry.”

Scaling risk scoring across 2.4 billion buildings globally

One of the standout achievements Addresscloud shared during the session was its ability to risk score billions of buildings across the globe.

Addresscloud partnered with the Overture Foundation, a collaboration of several companies, to ingest global building footprints—ultimately leading to the data of 2.4 billion buildings. The company integrates this data with peril datasets, such as flood and storm information, using Google Cloud’s BigQuery.

For example, Addresscloud recently processed 112 billion points of flood data across 153 million buildings in just 9 minutes, showcasing the efficiency and scale of their platform. This innovative approach enables the company to deliver risk insights at speed, providing clients with a hyper-local view of risk using global datasets.

While Adddrescloud has completed scoring buildings across Europe and nearly North America, the company is moving quickly towards covering Asia Pacific.

"By the end of the year, it will be incredible how far we’ve come!”

The power of partnerships

Jessica highlighted the critical role that partnerships play in Addresscloud’s success. From day one, Addresscloud has made it a priority to build strong relationships with both data providers and integration partners.

On the data side, Addresscloud collaborates with experts like JBA Risk Management and Ordnance Survey, enhancing their proprietary solutions with open data sources. These partnerships allow Addresscloud to push the boundaries of what’s possible and deliver a more robust value proposition to their customers. Working with data partners such as Overture has enabled innovation in risk modelling.

“Our partnerships underpin our value offering in the market"

Integration partners are equally as important, like Cytora and Send who help embed Addresscloud’s solutions. By working with best-in-class policy-admin systems and underwriting workbenches, Addresscloud can streamline the adoption of its platform and eliminate barriers for customers, making its solution more accessible across the insurance ecosystem.

"As we continue to work with our partners, it’s going to be very exciting to see what we can achieve."

The future of risk data and innovation

As the session concluded, both Alun and Jessica emphasised that Addresscloud’s mission is to keep pushing boundaries in risk scoring and geospatial data. By leveraging strategic partnerships, the company is able to deliver global insights with local precision—empowering insurers to make more informed decisions.

From humble beginnings to handling billions of data points, Addresscloud’s journey underscores the power of innovation and collaboration in unlocking real business value for its clients. With a rapidly expanding global footprint and a growing network of partners, Addresscloud is well-positioned to lead the charge in digital risk management for years to come.