It’s your event, and as luck would have it—the rain is coming down. It could be a drizzle, or it could be coming down in buckets. It might be falling during your event, or maybe it did the day before.
What is Weather Insurance & What Exactly is a Weather Insurance Claim?
Ever wondered how businesses protect themselves from bad weather? That’s where weather insurance comes in. It’s different from regular insurance because it’s not about physical damage – it’s all about specific weather conditions affecting your business or event. Think of a food truck festival getting rained out, or a golf tournament dealing with storms. Filing a claim is actually pretty simple: if the weather hits certain triggers (like an inch of rain or temperatures above 95°F), you get paid – no complicated paperwork needed. The best part? Everything is based on official weather data, so there’s no arguing about whether it was “kind of rainy” or “really rainy.” If the numbers match your policy triggers, you’re covered!
So in the case of your event, if the rainfall amount triggers your Vortex Weather Insurance policy, we send you a check for your weather insurance claim. That’s it.
Our team of weather insurance professionals makes it easy for you to get a policy, and even easier for your weather insurance claim to support your event revenue when the rain is a pain in the pocketbook.
Understanding The Weather Insurance Claim Process
For your weather insurance policy at Vortex, you’ve calculated and chosen a rain threshold. That’s the amount of rain you think will impact your event’s ability to generate revenue.
You’ve also already selected the event location, and the amount of time (the “window”) you want the rain insurance policy to be in effect.
If recorded rainfall occurs at your location, during that window—and it hits or surpasses the threshold, your policy triggers.
Related topic: the simple truth about rain insurance pricing.
How Do I Know If My Policy Triggered?
If an event had any rain on it or near it, we usually get an email from the event organizer. Because parametric policies are based on an index, you will know up front how much your claim will be for your selected threshold. We simply share the Certified Past Weather Report with you.
Let’s walk through the weather insurance claim journey.
Rain Occurs
Your Vortex Weather Insurance Policy drills down to your exact event location using WeatherWorks.
We Receive a Certified Past Weather Report
While we love hearing from our clients, they are not obligated to call us to report rainfall. WeatherWorks will send us a Certified Past Weather Report detailing site-specific rainfall for your event.
Vortex Confirms the Data
Once the Certified Past Weather Report is received, if your policy triggers a claim, a Claims Specialist sends the report to our headquarters requesting them to process the claim.
Processing the Payment
Our headquarters processes the confirmation of payout, cuts the check, and drops it in the mail.
You Don’t Have to Lift a Finger
Your job putting on a great event is already hard enough. We make protecting your bottom line from wet weather as easy as possible. Our weather insurance claim payment process occurs without you needing to do anything.
That’s part of what makes this type of event insurance so useful, and so easy.
- No paperwork. You don’t have to prove loss or hardship. Your event didn’t even have to be canceled or postponed. Our policies are based on the data, period.
- No adjusters. We don’t send anyone out to see your location or to decide how much you should get for payment. Your policy decides your payment, and the data indicates if the check will be cut.
- No payment delays. It takes as few as 48 hours for WeatherWorks to complete and verify a Certified Past Weather Report. It only takes a few days for us to process it and report a claim, so payment is typically mailed in less than 2 weeks.
Again, this entire process happens on its own, automatically. You don’t have to do anything else to receive your weather insurance claim payment if your policy triggers.
Real Cases Where the Weather Insurance Claim Helped
When rain hurts your event revenue, it can damage more than just that single event’s income. It can affect future events by reducing (or eliminating) the available funds to do it all again.
With rain insurance from Vortex, you can set the amount of payment made if the policy triggers, and you don’t have to insure the total value. This helps you protect the amount you need to be successful at this event, and possibly to secure the funds needed for your future events.
We’ve done exactly that for some wonderful clients.
Outdoor Concerts
Rain before or during an outdoor concert can not only stop the concert, it can stop the crowds from showing up if it falls before the concert, even if the show still goes on.
North Carolina
Vortex Weather Insurance has a great client in North Carolina who puts on a 10+ concert series over the summer. They have an amphitheater on-site, and that’s their event, or risk, location for their rain insurance policy.
One year they received two claims, because two of the 10 concerts got rained on (one even got rained out). Our policies can’t stop the rain, but they might just save the day.
Connecticut
At another outdoor concert series, 2 of their Thursday night concerts had rain that triggered their policy. Those 2 claims helped them continue operations for yet another successful season in spite of the wet weather. One payment even helped cover one of the performer’s upfront costs, which can never be recouped otherwise.
Kansas City.
A huge baseball tournament was held here, with several play locations across the Kansas City metro. Rain came into this large area, and interestingly—the northern policy triggered. However, the policy covering the southern location didn’t trigger.
Even though this baseball tournament’s northern policy triggered—the games weren’t canceled. Yet Vortex sent them their weather insurance claim check, because the policy isn’t based on loss. It’s based on the data.
Related topic: rain insurance vs event insurance.
Policy Information You’ll Need to Choose
The weather data comes from an independent third party source. However, your policy information for applying that data comes from you. As you set up your policy, we’ll need you to do 4 things:
Choose the Location
With WeatherWorks, your policy is site-specific for your event’s exact location.
Keep in mind that the location may not be your headquarters or even in the city where you operate. It’s the location of the event itself. If you have trouble discerning that location, we can help!
If you have any concerns about choosing your event location, just contact us.
Pinpoint Your Time Window
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 might 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.
Rain insurance won’t stop the rain. But if the rain thresholds are hit, the policy triggers and you get paid even if the event is eventually able to continue!
Decide Your Coverage Amount
If the worst of the worst happens—your event is completely rained out—how much money would you need to achieve your goals? You know your budgets and business forecasts, so you’ll know where the monetary threshold is between success and failure. Your weather insurance claim, if the policy triggers, can help you keep that bottom line from bottoming out.
It might even give you extra revenue you didn’t expect, because the policy could trigger even if your event goes on to be a roaring success. Remember, your rain insurance policy from Vortex Weather Insurance is only based on weather data.
Choose the Rain Threshold
As the event organizer, you have the most experience to understand what even a light rain could do to your event. So, you decide which rain threshold makes the most sense for your rain insurance policy.
If you use our Vortex Weather Insurance Portal to purchase your policy, your choices include our most frequently selected rainfall thresholds:
- .10 inches
- .25 inches
- .50 inches
- 1 inch
You can contact us for other customized rain thresholds to suit your event.
How to Purchase a Vortex Rain Insurance Policy
There are 3 ways to purchase your Vortex policy so that you’ll be covered and ready if there’s a need for a weather insurance claim.
Use the Vortex Insurance Portal
If you’re reading this in your organization’s office as you plan for the event, or you’re in your jammies on a Saturday night doing a little extra research, you can still purchase your rain insurance right now!
Using your laptop, desktop, or notebook computer, the Vortex Weather Insurance Portal allows you to put together and purchase a policy any time day or night, anywhere you are.
In just a few clicks, you can use this DIY event planning risk management tool to receive a customized weather insurance policy to fit your exact needs. That’s one more thing checked off your “to do” list, and one more reason to breathe easy if the weather decides not to cooperate.
Contact Us to Set Up Your Policy
Our staff has been supporting events with weather insurance policies since 2008. We can help you set up your policy for the right times, the right location, and help you think through the rainfall amount and coverage amount you’ll want to choose.
We created policies for racetracks and dirt tracks, art festivals and state fairs, golf events and soccer tournaments, and many others—including some truly unique events! Our knowledge includes the understanding about how rain can affect the hours before an event and after.
Don’t just buy weather insurance; leverage our knowledge and let us help you choose exactly what you need for the best outcome in case of wet weather.
Contact us. We’re there for you, rain or shine.
Have Your Insurance Broker/Agent Contact Vortex
If you already have an insurance broker or insurance agent handling your event’s various policies, we can work with them to add rain insurance to your portfolio. It’s a win-win-win for everyone involved. Best of all? You’re covered in case it rains!
A Weather Insurance Claim Should Be Simple
We’ve been doing this long enough to know that atmospheric science is complicated, but the weather insurance process should be easy.
- Pick your event location, your time window, your rain threshold, and your coverage amount.
- Purchase your policy.
- Have your awesome event.
- If the rain threshold is met according to your independent third-party Certified Past Weather Report, your policy triggers.
- You get a check.
And that’s it. Once you’ve purchased your policy, you don’t have to do anything else. We’re on it, watching, collecting data, and if the policy triggers—paying your weather insurance claim so you can feel a little sunshine on that rainy day.
Vortex Weather Insurance Protects Your Revenue
Contact us with any questions about your weather insurance claim. We also invite you to request a quote. It’s free, easy, and ready when you are.
Signing up for an account on the Vortex Weather Insurance Portal is also free. It makes weather risk management fast, simple, and super-convenient—for organizations, event planners, and even insurance brokers.
You’ve got enough on your plate. Let us worry about the weather. VortexIt today!
