Explore how high-res wildfire data changes underwriting decisions in practice.
When flames tore through the hills outside Los Angeles in January 2025, the difference between total loss and minimal damage often came down to a few metres. For insurers, those metres can mean millions.
In many regions, from California to southern Europe, wildfires are burning more intensely and more often. Climate change acts as an amplifier, while urban sprawl into fire-prone areas multiplies the potential losses, reshaping underwriting economics and risk management strategies.
Here are five reasons why this shift can no longer be ignored.
1. Wildfires are no longer rare or seasonal.
Wildfires are no longer once-in-a-decade events. They are increasingly regular shocks that destabilise portfolios, pressure reinsurance capacity, and challenge traditional underwriting models.
In Canada, catastrophe claims, driven both by greater exposure and by climate change, are pushing premiums higher and restricting policy availability in high-risk areas (Source: Reuters)
Southern Europe now experiences commercial wildfire losses equivalent to 6% of premiums written in the region. Typically, only a fraction of climate-related losses are insured (Source: EIOPA)
2. Climate change is compressing return periods.
In Australia, government reviews have confirmed what many underwriters already know: unprecedented heatwaves, cyclones, floods, and bushfires “are no longer rare events” but the new normal.
Events that once had decades between them are now occurring within years, sometimes consecutively, eroding insurers’ ability to spread and absorb risk.
(Source: Australian Government)
3. Low-resolution models miss high-stakes differences.
Wildfire risk doesn’t change by the mile. It changes by the metre. Yet many models still rely on coarse vegetation data or historic burn patterns that can’t distinguish between two properties just 100 metres apart.
This lack of resolution leads to costly mistakes: underpricing exposure and absorbing unexpected losses, or overpricing and losing competitiveness. In high-exposure regions, precision is no longer a competitive advantage. It is the cost of staying in the market.
4. The insurance mindset is shifting: from hazard to resilience.
Forward-thinking carriers are embedding property-level wildfire scores into pricing workflows. They map accumulation hotspots across entire books of business, and link premium incentives to fire-resilient upgrades and defensible space.
Partnerships with wildfire defence firms are becoming more common, reducing live-event losses. In California and Canada, some insurers now offer risk-based discounts to policyholders who take these measures. The result is fewer claims, stronger portfolios, and, crucially, continued insurability in the most exposed zones.
5. Precision is the new standard.
Munich Re’s Wildfire HD, part of the Location Risk Intelligence platform, delivers 30-metre resolution hazard data with building-level risk scores.
It integrates slope, vegetation, wind corridors, and defensible space, and is scientifically calibrated using real-world loss data.
Accessible via browser or API, Wildfire HD supports underwriting, exposure analysis, and treaty negotiations, giving insurers the clarity to act decisively in the most complex wildfire markets.
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