Location Insights and Policy Insights show you which of your locations and policies fall inside an event's footprint, but not every location inside a footprint suffers the same loss. Damage Factors translate MIS's Exposure and Claims Assessments into a Estimated Exposure range, so Insights can give you a realistic exposure estimate rather than treating every affected location as a total loss.

Every location inside an event footprint carries an Assessment. Damage Factors attach a minimum and maximum factor percentage to each of those Assessments.

GEO applies the Claims Layer Assessment where one exists for a location, and falls back to the Exposure Layer Assessment where it doesn't, since Claims Assessments are based on more detailed evidence. The resulting percentage range is applied to the location's Insured Value, then any location-level limits or deductibles are applied on top, before the figure rolls up into Policy Insights.
​

[SCREENSHOT: Location Insights table showing the application of Damage Factors]

GEO ships with a baseline Damage Factor set built from industry knowledge and MIS's own claims evidence, intended as a reasonable starting point rather than a fixed rule. The Wind baseline looks like this:

Flood, Hail, and Winter Storm each have their own baseline, since those perils are assessed on different scales. See [Assessment Scales] for what each Assessment category actually means before adjusting a range.

Click Configure Damage Factors from the Insights tab to open the factor editor. You can amend any of the minimum and maximum percentages, add a new named factor set, or delete a set you no longer use.
​

[SCREENSHOT: Damage Factor editor]

A common reason to run more than one set is to reflect different risk appetites within the same book. For example, a tighter, lower-range set for a Binder book, where the concern is high accumulation of low-severity losses, alongside a wider, more reactive set for Open Market contracts, where the concern is flagging potential large individual losses.

Factors are configured per user but visible to your whole team once applied to an event, so colleagues can select the same set from the Applied Damage Factors drop-down rather than rebuilding it.

Damage Factors feed a set of exposure columns in both Location Insights and Policy Insights. Both update automatically as MIS publishes new layers for an event, so a reserving range built on the Exposure Layer will narrow as the Claims Layer, and Building Level Assessment where available, replace it.

In Location Insights:

In Policy Insights:

See [Location Insights] and [Policy Insights] for the full column list on each, including fields not directly driven by Damage Factors

Do Damage Factors change what MIS assesses on the map?
No. The Assessment categories (Light Damage, Destroyed, and so on) come from MIS's own analysis and don't change. Damage Factors only control how those categories are translated into a estimate for your Insights.

Can I edit the MIS baseline directly, or do I need to create a new set?
You can edit the baseline in place, though most clients duplicate it into a new named set first so the original baseline stays available for comparison.

Why does the same Assessment produce different percentages for Wind versus Flood?
Each peril has its own baseline factor set, since Wind, Flood, Hail, and Winter Storm are assessed on different scales. Check which peril's factor set is active in the Applied Damage Factors drop-down.

Will changing a Damage Factor set retroactively change my reserving history?
Yes, Insights recalculate live against whichever factor set is currently applied, so switching sets changes the figures shown for both new and past events. If you need a fixed historic record, export the figures at the time rather than relying on Insights to reproduce them later.