Disaster Preparedness & Response

While our Risk Control department focuses on helping our customers understand and mitigate their risks, our Claim Catastrophe Response team takes the lead on customer interactions should a disaster or severe weather event occur. Our Claim Catastrophe Response team coordinates closely with multiple business units and functions across the organization, including Underwriting, Legal and Communications, to respond to our customers’ needs in a quick, efficient and compassionate manner. That is a core part of the Travelers Promise to take care of the people we are privileged to serve.

Our promise to help customers in the face of disasters begins well before a catastrophe hits. We partner with our customers and communities to help ensure they are prepared for a disaster, and we employ leading-edge data and analytics capabilities to help predict extreme events. In the event of a catastrophe, we leverage innovative technologies, the power of our data and analytics, and our more than 30,000 in-house employees, to provide the best possible outcomes for our affected customers.

Travelers offers a range of resources that help our customers and the public prepare for disasters:

• Business Continuity Planning. Our network of more than 600 Risk Control consultants and our self-service website for Business Insurance customers provide a comprehensive set of business continuity planning resources to help customers understand their unique risks. We work to help businesses of all types prepare for disasters and other disruptions to their operations and supply chains.
• Prepare & Prevent Resources. Through the Prepare & Prevent page of our corporate website, we provide customers, agents and brokers and the general public with extensive educational resources to help them plan for, stay safe during and recover from natural disasters of all types.
• Education and Advocacy. The Travelers Institute, our public policy division, helps further educate the public and advocate with policymakers on the benefits of disaster preparedness and resilient communities.
• Building Resilient Communities. Through charitable partnerships, Travelers and the Travelers Foundation support building strong communities, including through a partnership with Habitat for Humanity^®.
• Wildfire Defense. In 2019, we launched a Wildfire Defense Services Endorsement for California home and landlord policies with fire coverage. From 2020 to 2023, we extended this offering to all Small Commercial customers in California, home and landlord customers in Colorado, and farm and ranch customers in 17 Western states. This endorsement is included at no additional cost to the policyholder. Travelers works with Wildfire Defense Systems, a private firm that specializes in wildfire intervention, which uses proprietary forecasting and threat analysis to identify which Travelers customers are likely to be impacted by a wildfire. For at-risk properties, Wildfire Defense Systems provides loss intervention services, such as reducing potential fuel sources, taping vents and applying fire retardants.
• Catastrophe Communications. The Travelers Risk Control department partners with Personal Insurance, Business Insurance and the Claim department to develop and distribute catastrophe communications via email and social media before and after disaster events. Once again, in 2023, we provided our customers and agents with actionable guidance before an event and/or informed them of steps they can take after an event to help mitigate damage, file a claim and begin the process of recovery.

As part of our efforts to respond to our customers’ needs in a quick, efficient and compassionate manner after a disaster or extreme weather event, we seek to further develop and leverage our leading analytical capabilities. We have built a proprietary approach to assembling data that lets us assess severe storms, such as the precise size of hail forming in a storm cell, to understand the footprint of an event, how many customers may be affected and the probable severity of the losses. In addition to catastrophe (CAT) modeling, our approach uses geospatial capabilities, which integrate event overlays that aggregate millions of data points from weather services, our weather models, and ultra-high-resolution aerial imagery on policy and claim locations. Our sophisticated workforce management platform leverages our geospatial insights to inform workforce deployment and Claim response decisions before, during and after a catastrophe event in order to engage the right resources and technical expertise and begin deployment efforts before claims are even reported. All of that helps us to get the right people to the right place faster than ever before.

We continue to innovate and enhance our analytical capabilities, enabling us to fulfill our promise to take care of our customers in the event of a natural disaster. Our recent innovations include:

• Combining Aerial Imaging and Artificial Intelligence Learning to Detect Wildfire and Wind Losses. Our geospatial platforms use photographic images taken from aircraft equipped with market-leading aerial capture systems. Pre-loss imagery is collected continually for virtually all of our insured locations. This “blue-sky” imagery can be compared to post-event (“gray-sky”) imagery to assist us in detecting and evaluating loss. In 2023, we collected post-event imagery covering more than 7,500 square miles in connection with 24 separate events. Leveraging the post-event imagery of damaged and undamaged homes, we use industry-leading artificial intelligence and machine learning to quickly assess the damage sustained, which helps inform our operational response. The Travelers Wildfire Loss Detector tool, which won the 2019 Gartner Eye on Innovation Award and a CIO 100 Award, helps us assess which properties are total losses after a wildfire event, while the Travelers Wind Damage Detector tool allows us to evaluate the severity of damage sustained in wind events. With these powerful tools, we can more quickly identify customers with the most significant damage so we can begin the claim process – often before we have access to the area – thereby allowing our customers to begin recovering and rebuilding their properties sooner. In 2023, we enhanced our agent and broker portal to include these tools so our distribution partners can better assist customers after a disaster as well. This video provides more detail on our geospatial capabilities.
• Using Smartphones for Quicker, Safer Claim Inspections. Thanks to innovative virtual inspection and measurement technology, we are able to transform smartphone photos of a property into a precise 3D model so that our Claim professionals can more quickly and accurately inspect and estimate property damage. We are often able to evaluate the damage with information our policyholders provide to us, without having to schedule an on-site inspection. We use similar technology to virtually handle auto losses after large CAT events where thousands of cars can be damaged. With the help of these cutting-edge technologies, we are creating a faster and easier claim process for our customers and a safer environment for our employees.

Where possible, we also gather data from controlled tests to improve prevention and preparation. For example, Travelers supports the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), which has a one-of-a-kind controlled research facility that can generate hurricane-force winds, hail, and wind-driven rain and embers. The studies conducted in this facility allow IBHS and supporting members such as Travelers to study the impacts of weather events in real-world scenarios; they also allow us to analyze the results to better respond to events and protect our customers and their assets. For more information on IBHS and the ongoing work Travelers supports, see our illustrative initiative regarding IBHS.

Our sustained investment in innovative catastrophe response strategies sets Travelers apart from our peers. We handle customer claims, including all catastrophe (CAT) claims, with specially trained Travelers employees; we do not generally contract CAT claims to third-party adjusters. We employ more than 400 dedicated catastrophe response specialists across North America, who are prepared to deploy on 24 hours’ notice. This short video illustrates the work of our CAT response professionals. Operational and logistical support specialists at the National Catastrophe Center support this CAT team, which also partners closely with our nearly 2,000 property Claim professionals to respond to losses promptly, efficiently and compassionately.

In 2023, there were 28 weather disasters which each resulted in total economic impact that exceeded $1 billion,¹ in addition to the many smaller events that impacted our customers. We responded to 74 CAT events and adjusted nearly all of the related claims with our own employees (i.e., without the need for outside adjusters). Our in-house claim capability allowed us to quickly implement procedures to handle claims virtually when possible, and in person when needed, with a consistently high standard of customer service. This capability is a competitive advantage that results in a better outcome for our customers and a more efficient outcome for us.

We leverage our Loss Consultation team – the first such team in the industry – in support of customers impacted by catastrophe events. Our Loss Consultation team consists of Property and Auto coverage experts, who are available seven days a week to give our customers and agents the information they need to make an informed decision regarding whether to file a claim. In some cases, they can also immediately process the claim after confirming coverage.

Our sophisticated workforce management programs help us quickly organize, triage and deploy Claim professionals with the right expertise to the affected area. We leverage the power of more than 30,000 employees to support our response efforts in the event of a large catastrophe. We continue to make significant investments in training our Claim staff and cross-train thousands of employees to handle lower-severity catastrophe claims. This allows our catastrophe and claim experts to focus on high-severity claims without sacrificing quality. In 2023, our Claim professionals completed more than 91,000 hours of property claim training.

Our team follows a catastrophe playbook that includes resource deployment and communication to our customers throughout our process. Our Claim department regularly conducts tabletop exercises to test our readiness to respond to different disaster scenarios, including storms, wildfires, earthquakes, cyberattacks and man-made events. The purpose of these exercises is to evaluate and improve our response to events, identify any gaps in resources and implement a coordinated recovery strategy that prioritizes resources required for the response.

Our National Catastrophe Center, staffed by full-time catastrophe management professionals, allows us to plan and coordinate response activities in a secure environment away from the disaster area – before, during and after an event. Our technical experts monitor weather 24/7 and overlay patterns with claim trends and our customers’ locations. This approach enables us to identify potential events early and to transform information quickly into action. Additionally, our “command center” is equipped with state-of-the-art data management, visualization and teleconferencing tools and is linked to hundreds of data sources, including the Global Forecast System, the National Weather Service Doppler radar network, Travelers Customer Service Centers and our internal systems that track claim metrics and staff resource availability. These capabilities provide us with the ability to deploy resources effectively and on a timely basis, which, in turn, allows us to better assist our customers and to respond to and resolve claims more quickly. 

For more information about how we help our customers and agents manage catastrophic weather events, see our Travelers Emergency Response video.

¹ Based on 2023 data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Overall, our catastrophe (CAT) response approach enables Travelers to respond quickly, effectively and compassionately – and with integrity – when our customers need us most. Despite the added logistical difficulties inherent in CAT response, our CAT claim performance consistently meets or exceeds our internal benchmarks for claim handling. This remained the case in 2023, when we continued to successfully respond to an unprecedented number of CAT events. In 2023:

• Nearly 90% of property CAT claims were resolved within 30 days of receipt of the claim notice.
• 81% of CAT claims were paid within a week of inspection.
• 54% of CAT claims were paid the same day as inspection.¹

These results were particularly remarkable given that we responded to 74 CAT events and over 135,000 CAT notices of loss in 2023. In addition to benefiting our customers, our ability to quickly adjust claims plays an important role in helping our communities in their recovery efforts. Responding to CAT events is core to our business, and we are committed to delivering on the promise that we make with every policy we write. This short video shows the spirit and dedication our employees bring to helping our customers after CAT events occur.

¹ Based on Travelers catastrophe claim data from property claims, 2023.