As we move into Autumn, and Q4 and hurricane season, let’s take a quick look back at the three most popular Risks of Hazard blogs. It was an exciting few months here at the blog, highlighted by a new monthly readership record in September and our first appearance on NPR.

• The third most popular post since the start of summer was Flooding In Houston – Where, Not When. Houston is a popular topic for flood bloggers, if not underwriters, because it is such a unique and challenging place to understand flood risk. I think we bridged the gap between blogging and underwriting in this post, though, and we are now building a solution for Houston Flood into our software. Yes, Houston doesn’t only get its own blog posts, it gets its own flood analytic.

• Number two was also a September post, which explains how we set our readership record in September. Based on an opinion piece in the Tampa Bay Times, Not Just Private Flood – Universal Flood was an instant hit with our readers. I was surprised by the response, not realizing the latent interest in the potential bundling of flood into homeowner policies everywhere. It is an idea whose time is coming, and the response to this blog proves it.

• The most popular Risks of Hazard piece over the past few months was based on research my colleague Mike Alwais and I conducted on coastal FIRMs. I think the title gives away the conclusions: Are Coastal FIRMs Useless for Underwriting? I can’t figure out if the success is a result of underwriters and risk managers looking for confirmation of something they already felt, or if it was a legitimate surprise that coast FIRMs might not be useful. A third possibility I like to contemplate is that underwriters everywhere are Googling “should I use coastal FIRMs for underwriting?”. If they are, the answer now pops right up for them.

 This is a good time to thank you for reading our blog. It is a lot of fun to bring it to you. It is satisfying that so many people are reading it. And it is thrilling that the blog is having a clear and positive impact on how cat risk is being understood, managed and underwritten. So, thank you!