Mr. Michael Horan:

Household insurance is a mass market product and insurance companies make their individual underwriting decisions on the basis of the information available to them, and geographical location is an important rating factor. Insurance companies use their own claims experience, secondary data and flood models, etc. The geodirectory gives exact geocodes for each building and pinpoints the property. Without geocoding, risks would be assessed on a blanket basis. It would be assumed that all properties within a geographical area are at equal risk of a flood.

In simple terms, geocoding enables insurers to see that, for example, one side of a street is within a flood hazard area and the other side is not. Rather than excluding all areas in a blanket manner, geocoding depicts graphically what buildings are within a flood hazard area and what buildings are not.