ICEYE pushes satellite intelligence from claims response into underwriting

ICEYE is increasingly using its analytics to support underwriting and risk selection, as the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite intelligence pioneer expands beyond its original focus on post-event catastrophe intelligence.

Speaking during RVS 2026 in Monte Carlo, Stephen Lathrope, ICEYE senior vice president, responsible for its solutions division, said the company was marking five years since signing its first insurance sector contract with Swiss Re.

Since then, its re/insurance customer base has grown from one to around 40, while its catastrophe intelligence products have expanded beyond flood to wildfire, earthquake and tropical cyclone.

“A lot has changed,” Lathrope said. “We’ve added a number of other perils, which I think represents a coming of age for us.”

ICEYE announced during RVS that another re/insurer, Sompo Japan, had signed up to use its flood insights product to support claims response, as part of the Japanese carrier’s broader resilience programme.

Lathrope said increasing adoption of its SAR intelligence had also revealed new ways for insurers to use the information ICEYE has accumulated.

Event response to underwriting

Historically, much of ICEYE’s work with insurers has centred on providing information during and immediately after an event has struck, pertaining to risks already on the portfolio – not those facing underwriters waiting to be selected, priced and underwritten.

“There’s now a lot of value locked up in our historical archive,” he said.

ICEYE has completed between 500 and 600 flood analyses globally, including around 200 in the US, producing high-resolution information on flood extent and depth down to individual properties.

The archive is now becoming sufficiently extensive to support risk selection and pricing, Lathrope suggested.

“Five years’ worth of high-resolution understanding at an individual property level means that we’ve now got something that can be used for risk selection and pricing,” Lathrope said.

He pointed to work by another of its clients, QBE, which is using observed flood depths to improve its understanding of restoration costs in different Australian states.

ICEYE has also been testing its US data to examine whether historical observations can provide additional insight into which properties are more or less likely to flood.

“We know there’s an advantage that comes from the data,” Lathrope said. “That’s the beginning of something that is less about in-event response and more about underwriting.”

The growing satellite constellation should deepen that archive further. ICEYE has increased its fleet to 76 satellites launched by mid-September, and is reconfiguring manufacturing to increase production, with a target of building as many as 100 satellites annually by 2027.

“The more satellites, the more observation we’re capable of making, and that will translate into more archive from which to draw on,” Lathrope said. “It’s a virtuous circle.”

Predicting the next flood

ICEYE is also moving further into predictive flood intelligence through a partnership with The Water Institute and the addition of its FloodID capabilities.

The technology uses physics-based modelling and other inputs to predict how a flood is likely to develop shortly before and during an event.

“When one is about to happen, we are modelling at high resolution based on the timely weather forecasts and all the information about that cat that is about to hit,” Lathrope said.

ICEYE plans to combine that prediction with subsequent satellite observations, allowing the model to be refined against ongoing events.

“For us, strategically, that’s an extension of what we do, from observing the event to providing a near-term high-resolution prediction,” Lathrope said.

“We’ll get better and better at it as we train it with the observations of what has actually happened, and that virtuous loop is difficult to replicate unless you do the data bit.”