Those target calendar days matter to your bottom line. Whether it’s a job site, festival grounds, a concert venue, or any location where weather could affect the outcome, you need special event rain insurance to help protect your all-important income.
At Vortex Weather Insurance, our staff of ultimate weather nerds specializes in rain insurance, along with other types of weather risk management services. Contact us with any questions about special event rain insurance.
If you’re a DIY’er, jump over to our Vortex Insurance Portal for some super-easy policy creation that you can do at your office, at home, at 2AM even. The portal makes it simple, and Vortex makes it worth it.
And continue on to understand what rain insurance is, and why you need it.
What is special event rain insurance?
Simply put, special event rain insurance helps protect your organization or business’s event income from adverse weather conditions.
Rain dampens any business’s income, except maybe umbrella boutiques and lunch delivery services. It makes shoppers, workers, and audiences prefer to stay somewhere out of the rain—like at home. They’ll wait until the weather is better, and sometimes if that means completely missing the event, so be it.
But for businesses/organizations that put on the event, a rainy day can devastate their revenue. From paying the costs involved with that day, to the event not being able to be rescheduled, your bottom line needs weather risk management to help you keep on keeping on.
Seasonal Attractions
You have a big one-weekend carnival that helps fund your community for a year. And Saturday is your big money-maker day. If the season you celebrate is known for rain—such as Spring Celebrations and Fall Festivals—rain might not shut down the event, but it can shut down the crowds you rely on.
You still have to pay the carnival company, the site rental, paid performers and entertainers, the various licenses and more. Much more. This is the exact kind of special event that rain insurance can help.
Outdoor Events
A carnival. A sports tournament. A corn maze. If it’s outside, and if you depend on the money made from that event, then your business or organization should look into special event rain insurance to help protect your bottom line from inclement weather.
The location is prone to rain.
You know when and where you want to have your event—but there’s one issue: it’s rainy this time of year. You can hope for the best, but you need to plan for the worst. That way if rain decides your time is the right time to fall, your revenue won’t have to fall and drain away too.
Construction
Your company has a big project that must be completed within a certain amount of time. What if, on the day all those cement trucks are supposed to come, rain arrives before they do and halts construction?
Rain insurance could help you mitigate the lost revenue caused by the delay.
Movie/Production Companies
Catching that outdoor scene in the right light requires so many small pieces to fall in place. But, if rain is falling instead, that delay could brutally impact your production’s fiscal ability. Having special event rain insurance for that day, or that specific part of that day, could get you the money you need to offset those delay costs and keep the camera rolling!
Drone Pilots
What’s your vector, Victor? Drone pilots need good weather conditions not just to capture the right shots and footage for their clients, but also to protect their equipment. Deadlines, rentals, and more could cause fiscal ramifications for the event, not to mention the lost revenue if that was the only day they could work for the client.
Rain insurance can help drone companies recoup financial losses
Auctions
Large outdoor auctions need great weather to show off what’s being bid on, and to provide the crowds of bidders ready to buy! Rain drives down attendance, and may not allow the auction to occur because no one wants their antiques out in the drizzle and storm.
By using special event rain insurance for your auction, you can keep your hey-bidda-bidda-bottom line protected when the wet stuff wins.
How Special Event Rain Insurance Works
You’ve picked the day for your construction site to hit massively important deadlines. Or for your festival to have that expensive, headlining act hit the stage. You probably even know the hours that would be most impacted by rainfall.
That’s where special event rain insurance becomes your ally for adversity.
The Time
At Vortex Weather Insurance, we base our rain insurance quote options on city and state statistics we gather from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Then you select the hours for the policy to apply. These hours can include your entire event or your event’s most profitable/important hours. You’ll also want to include some of the hours leading up to and after your event. The beauty of rain insurance is that you can customize the combination of hours that best fit your event goals.
For example, your construction company has that deadline day on a Monday. The site must be graded so that the rest of the crew can get to work, and you’ve got graders contracted with guarantees, and a client with deadline waivers that if not hit could lose big bucks for you.
Graders can’t grade mud, so if it rains, not only could your current revenue be impacted, but those deadline bonuses could be washed away as well.
Rain insurance won’t stop the rain. But if the rain thresholds are hit, the policy triggers and you get paid even if the work is eventually able to continue!
Apply that same rationale to your festival, your tournament, whichever event you do. You could take some—or maybe all—of the “ouch!” out of your bottom line when rain falls, with special event rain insurance.
The Location
With a rain insurance policy at Vortex, we drill down to your event location’s precise address.
The Rain Threshold
You know how even a light rain could impact your event. So, you decide which rain threshold makes the most sense for your rain insurance policy.
Did it trigger?
After your event, Vortex Weather Insurance uses Certified Past Weather Reports from WeatherWorks to determine how much measurable rain fell during the policy period. This third-party independent agency reports your localized results, and should your policy threshold be met or exceeded, your rain insurance triggers and the claim process is activated.
What else is needed?
Nothing. De nada. Zero. You don’t need to supply anything else to us. We don’t require ‘proof of loss’ for the insurance to pay a claim.
If the predetermined rainfall amount meets or exceeds the predetermined threshold as we’ve outlined above, the policy triggers. That’s it.
This means your workday might be salvageable after the rainfall. Or maybe the event/concert/tournament isn’t canceled and continues to completion. If your policy triggers, you still get paid!
Also nice: your claim payment is typically mailed in less than 2 weeks. You don’t have to wait months. That’s a win!
Real World Examples
Vortex Weather Insurance helps companies from all walks of business manage their weather risk with our insurance products.
One of our favorite clients is Roadway Productions. We’ve been working with them for years, providing weather insurance for their “BatFest!” This super-cool festival in Austin, TX, happens one day a year. One day.
It coincides with the bats located under a bridge in Austin going out in the evening to feed. Picture this: a bridge and event area covered with tens of thousands of people enjoying vendors and food and activities and live bands. Then, around a certain time that evening, over 1.5 MILLION bats leave their cave to enter the twilight air.
It’s an amazing sight. And this event is only allowed to happen one day, regardless of the weather. There are no delay dates.
Because Roadway Productions utilizes Vortex for their weather risk management, they’ve had payouts happen twice, allowing this expensive and awesome event to continue on a bridge. We’ve paid out twice, and helped them recoup the losses and continue their once-a-year event.
Another client who’s benefited by having special event rain insurance is the Virginia Beach Soccer Tournament. It’s obvious that heavy rainfall before a tournament can make the fields unplayable, or it causes the casual watchers to stay at home, killing ticket sales. Beach FC has had their policy triggered three times to date, and that was regardless of any kind of cancellation.
Cancellation vs Rain Insurance
Cancellation insurance exists, but that’s not what we do. Our rain insurance doesn’t require your event to be canceled in any way. We rely on the rainfall threshold to govern whether the policy triggers.
| |
Pros |
Cons |
| Weather insurance |
- Insurance typically more likely to trigger
- Simple and automatic claims process
- Defined coverage limits are paid in full (not indemnity based)
- Highly customizable
- Doesn’t require proof of loss
|
- Length of coverage window must be pre-determined by the insured
- Probability of occurrence is typically higher; thus the premium is typically higher
- Only covers weather-related incidents
|
| Event cancellation insurance |
- Typically less expensive
- Typically covers 24+ hours of the event
- Covers a wide variety of catastrophic cancellations
|
- Burden of proof of loss falls on the insured
- Probability of occurrence is typically lower
- Limited on customizations
- Certain insured perils may be excluded depending upon when the policy is purchased
|
Our Portal Makes Weather Insurance Easy
So many activities depend on good weather for good income:
You know why you need special event rain insurance. How do you get it? One way is to contact us, and we can help you get the right type of weather risk management, at the right time and for the right amount, to help you should rain mess up your plans.
However, you can also lock in your policy on your own, whenever you’re ready! It’s called the Vortex Insurance Portal, and it’s the bomb when weather is a bust.
A Direct Connection
Whether you’re in the office putting together an event, or in your pajamas in the kitchen finalizing your fundraiser, the Portal lets you lock down rain insurance easily.
How the Portal Works
On our website, click on the phrase “GET YOUR POLICY.” This will open up two options:
- BROKER PORTAL For insurance brokers/agents to serve their clients’ needs.
- EVENTS PORTAL Access to weather insurance products for:
- Anyone who needs weather risk management for their event.
Get an Account
We need some info about who you are, your company, and a little contact information so we can serve you better. But don’t worry – no credit card info yet.
Make Your Choices
Step-by-step, you’ll add:
- The event address
- The type of weather insurance (rain insurance)
- The day/days you wish to target
- The time/hours to insure
- Your necessary insurance limits
- The rain threshold
- And then the home stretch: confirm the coverage, sign the digital application, and pay by credit card.
It only takes a few minutes to get through the entire portal process. Because the portal automatically updates constantly with current NOAA data, all policy premiums are up-to-the-minute.
Of course, we’ll be happy to join you as you use the portal. We’re ready to help anytime during business hours, online or by phone. You can DIY, or DI-with-us—it’s all good.
Vortex Weather Insurance Portal Benefits
- It’s fast!
- It’s easy to use.
- You don’t have to wait for underwriter approval.
- Certified Past Weather Reports from WeatherWorks.
- You can do it on your computer or tablet!
- Up to 15 days prior to the start date to purchase.
- Easy payment with a credit card.
And your Vortex Weather Insurance Portal account lets you view claims, settlements, and future event policies all in one place.
Let us worry about the weather.
You’ve already got enough on your plate, don’t you? Don’t worry about how the weather might affect your revenue. With special event rain insurance from Vortex, you can manage your weather risk and help keep your bottom line from hitting the bottom of the barrel.
We make the process simple and time-effective, especially with our Vortex Insurance Portal for brokers/agents and event planners. Anytime you’re ready, check out the portal, or call us at 1-203-550-6150.
Depend on rain insurance when your income depends on the event, with Vortex.
