Verisk Analytics : 2024 Annual Report Annual Report
VRSK
Shaping Tomorrow
In an era of evolving risk, Verisk is actively creating a more resilient future. As a trusted industry partner, we collaborate to reimagine what's possible for insurance. Through data, analytics, and innovation, we're turning today's challenges into tomorrow's opportunities. We're fostering connections and developing new efficiencies to push the industry forward. Together, we'll build the resilience that communities need, deliver the technology that the industry demands, and drive the innovation that makes tomorrow's possibilities a reality today.
About Verisk
Verisk (Nasdaq: VRSK) is a leading strategic data analytics and technology partner to the global insurance industry. It empowers clients to strengthen operating efficiency, improve underwriting and claims outcomes, combat fraud, and make informed decisions about global risks, including climate change, extreme events, sustainability and political issues. Through advanced data analytics, software, scientific research, and deep industry knowledge, Verisk helps build global resilience for individuals, communities and businesses. With teams across more than 20 countries, Verisk consistently earns the Great Place To Work® Certified™ company designation and fosters an inclusive culture where all team members feel they belong.
For more information, visit Verisk.com and the Verisk Newsroom.
A Message to Our Shareholders
Verisk delivered another year of strong growth, margin expansion, and progress on our mission to be the leading strategic data, analytics, and technology partner to the global insurance industry. In another year marked by severe weather events and their devastating impact on people, communities, and businesses, our work played a meaningful role in mitigation and reconstruction efforts-contributing to stronger global resilience. We have a unique opportunity through our expertise, scale, and centrality to invest in and deliver data, analytics, and technology that provide value through improved efficiency and accuracy to our clients and the insurance industry.
Lee M. Shavel
President and Chief Executive Officer This year's financial results compounded on top of strong growth in 2023 and are further demonstration of our predictable growth trajectory. On an organic constant currency (OCC) basis, our 2024 revenue grew 7.1% and adjusted EBITDA grew 9.9%, producing a 120-basis-point increase in our adjusted EBITDA margin to 54.7%. Our diluted adjusted EPS from continuing operations of $6.64 in 2024 was up 16.3% from $5.71 in the prior year, benefiting from our revenue growth, operating leverage, a reduced share count, and a lower tax rate.
models, for example, delivered attractive returns as clients recognized the value of these improvements through strong contract renewals. We continue to invest in new technologies and applications, including Generative AI and cloud-based platforms, to invent new solutions and connectivity for the industry. In addition to this investment, we also returned $1.3 billion to shareholders in 2024 through dividends and share repurchases.
Delivering consistent and predictable growth through strategic engagement
Our performance was consistent with our guidance for 2024, and we met or exceeded the longer-term expectations we set at Investor Day in 2023. We achieved these strong financial results by focusing on our three key priorities: delivering consistent and predictable top-line growth, driving operating efficiency and profitability, and ensuring disciplined capital allocation. This success has been driven by several factors, including elevating and intensifying our strategic engagement with clients, continuing to invest in innovation at scale on behalf of the industry, and enhancing our go-to-market approach to be more client-centric.
With strong returns and capital generation, we continued to invest in improving the value of our existing solutions, inventing new solutions to address industry needs, and returning capital to shareholders. Investments in our Core Lines Reimagine initiative and Extreme Event catastrophe
Our focus on heightened strategic engagement with C-suite executives at client organizations has accelerated growth with our largest clients. By engaging directly with senior leadership, we have gained deeper insights into our clients' enterprise needs, broadened and strengthened our relationships, and opened new doors of opportunity with insurers, reinsurers, and other parties in the insurance ecosystem. As a result, we achieved stronger renewals and better sales outcomes while also improving customer satisfaction. In fact, for 2024 our NPS score was 52, a two-point improvement from the prior year. As we begin 2025, we are expanding this approach to more clients, reinforcing our trusted partnerships.
Our Reimagine Core Lines initiative is a prime example of the greater value we're driving for our clients. As we continue to roll out new features for this digital platform,
clients are realizing increased efficiency and faster speed to market through our Future of Forms tools, which help them rapidly ingest, analyze, and react to form changes that impact their filings. Additionally, the new Actuarial Hub provides tools and risk insights to help insurers leverage ISO loss cost data quickly and confidently to address evolving pricing needs.
Another aspect of our broader industry engagement is our work with state departments of insurance to identify and root out fraud, increase efficiency, and deliver savings that can ultimately benefit the consumer. Taken together, these efforts have created broader, more scalable business opportunities across the global insurance ecosystem.
Driving operating efficiency and allocating capital with discipline
In 2024, we delivered a 54.7% adjusted EBITDA margin, toward the higher end of our full-year guidance. This represented 120 bps of margin expansion from 2023.
We expect further improvement in 2025 through strong operating leverage and active expense management. We continue to optimize the cost of our global talent by expanding our presence in Poland and India, markets that offer world-class data science and technology talent. Additionally, we recently modernized our internal financial and human capital ERP systems.
Driving growth by connecting the industry
We're fortunate to be a trusted partner to the global insurance ecosystem. From that position, we invest in data and technology at scale, on behalf of the industry, and create value for our clients at a lower cost of investment and ownership than any individual insurer could achieve on their own.
Our focus on disciplined capital allocation remains constant. In 2024, our return on invested capital was approximately 25%, with incremental returns on capital of approximately 20%, as we continue to invest at high internal rates of return. Disciplined capital allocation is central to our decision-making process at Verisk as we endeavor to invest our strong free cash flow into value-creating opportunities, both organically and inorganically, that support growth with attractive returns.
Our role as a trusted partner-and the fact that we're deeply embedded in the functions and processes of the insurance industry-enables us to create greater efficiencies for the entire ecosystem. It's a network effect that benefits every connection point, including insurance carriers, brokers, contractors, regulators, and, ultimately, policyholders.
One example of this is our Xactware platform, which connects insurers and restoration contractor companies and independent adjusters in the property estimating space. We're enhancing APIs and seamlessly connecting an expanding ecosystem of partners to improve efficiency. Ultimately, we're helping property claims professionals restore policyholders faster after a loss, whether from individual events or catastrophes such as hurricanes.
We have a strong track record of returning excess capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. In fact, we initiated our dividend in 2019 and have increased it annually, demonstrating our confidence in our business's strong cash flow and our commitment to returning cash to shareholders. In 2024, we increased our dividend by 15% and I am pleased to share that our board of directors has approved another 15% increase for 2025. Since initiation, we have grown the dividend at a CAGR of 10.3%. The dividend is our promise to share our strong cash flow generation with all shareholders, including our employees. We continue to balance our strong dividend growth with share repurchases to maximize our return of capital to shareholders. Over the past five years, we have returned over $7 billion in capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
We're also expanding our Whitespace digital trading platform. This API-first platform connects brokers, underwriters, and managing general agents, enabling them to offer, negotiate, place, and bind (re)insurance contracts with accuracy and speed. The platform is experiencing tremendous growth, and in 2024, we expanded it beyond the London specialty insurance market into Continental Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
The opportunity to innovate for the industry continues to expand
Overall, the insurance industry experienced a positive turnaround after experiencing a three-year stretch of record losses and deteriorating combined ratios. The primary drivers were inflation, exposure growth,
and increased frequency and severity of catastrophic events. Overall, the industry saw improved financial performance in 2024, helped by continued premium growth. But challenges remain.
Our annual study of insured losses from global natural catastrophes estimates insurers should be prepared for $151 billion in losses, up nearly 14% from the prior year. Insurers must also keep up with evolving regulations, customer expectations, and emerging technology. To address these headwinds, the industry will require more data, technology, and insights to better segment and price risks and improve efficiency.
and we enabled AI features so clients can deliver faster assistance to policyholders. Our PCS business, which serves as an industry benchmark, provided catastrophe loss information to clients, and our extreme events business provided loss estimates for the fires (between $28 billion and $35 billion). These loss estimates help the industry in the near term by creating a clearer understanding of a disaster's impact, and over the long term they can help inform resilience and mitigation efforts and refine catastrophe models.
The need presents a tremendous opportunity for Verisk to leverage our unique position in the insurance ecosystem, unmatched data sets, and advanced analytics to deliver value throughout the insurance lifecycle. Whether it's our 40 generative AI initiatives in development, connecting data across our businesses to enhance product offerings, or developing emerging tech talent through our Data Science Excellence Program, we're well-positioned to meet the industry's needs and deliver innovations that shape its future.
We expect to play a vital role in helping improve the insurance market in California. Verisk was the first organization to submit a wildfire model as part of the California Department of Insurance's initiative to stabilize the insurance market. These models provide insights into natural disaster risks and can support increased insurance availability across the state.
Shaping the future of insurance
Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, we're incredibly excited about building on our success and continuing our trajectory as a consistent and predictable growth company. The opportunity ahead to drive the industry forward is massive. Our strategic approach allows us to leverage data and technological innovations at a global scale and provide incredible value to the industry by reducing investment costs while simultaneously enhancing the industry's efficiency and capacity to respond to emerging challenges.
Our focus remains clear: to be a strategic partner who reimagines insurance through technological innovation. We are committed to building global resilience by providing insurers with the data, insights, and technologies they need to navigate an unpredictable future. The trust our clients place in us is a testament to our mission. Together, we are not just adapting to change-we are actively shaping the future of insurance, making it more efficient, data-driven, and capable of supporting individuals, communities, and businesses when they need it most.
Lee M. Shavel
President and Chief Executive Officer
One of those challenges arose in early 2025, when destructive wildfires spread through much of Southern California. The impact on people and communities was horrific. We've been assisting in several ways. Our property estimating solutions are supporting claims adjusters and restoration contractors in the rebuilding process,
Building resilience isn't about one single action, but rather a network of interconnected, sustainable choices-threads of resilience that, together, form something much stronger. At its core, Verisk's sustainability strategy is one of constant progress, connection, and accountability as we look to shape tomorrow.
Working with Purpose
In 2024, Verisk worked with a third-party consultant to update the assessment of our priority sustainability issues. We wanted to gain a deeper understanding of our most significant impacts on people and the environment ('impact' perspective), as well as the most significant financial risks and opportunities arising from each sustainability issue ('financial' perspective). This assessment will help guide our sustainability management efforts moving forward and support our future alignment with emerging regulatory requirements in the U.S. and worldwide. The updated assessment largely reinforced the conclusions of our previous assessment and existing strategy.
Our work exemplifies our purpose of helping businesses, people, and societies become stronger, more resilient, and sustainable. For example, in early 2025, Verisk provided immediate support to our clients and communities impacted by the wildfires in Southern California with access to our tools, data, and assistance from our teams to help speed up the claims and restoration process. Longer term, our wildfire models provide insight into natural disaster risk and can help stabilize the insurance market and support increased insurance availability.
Verisk introduced LOCATION® Property Protection Score™ (PPS), which helps insurers accurately rate and underwrite homeowners' risks by assessing fire protection capabilities at the address level. Building on the LOCATION® Public Protection Classification® (PPC), LOCATION PPS leverages the Fire Suppression Rating Schedule (FSRS) criteria and is enhanced with inputs such as actual drive times to fire stations, property-specific characteristics, and detailed measurement of distance to water. This solution benefits insurers by offering stronger predictive performance and insights, and benefits communities by helping them be more resilient as they work on updating their fire suppression system and criteria.
Shaping Tomorrow for a More Resilient, Sustainable Future
As severe storms and catastrophes become more frequent, insurers need effective tools like Verisk's Roof Age, 360Value®, and FireLine®, which use imagery and analytics to aid in decision-making and benefit property owners with better coverage and faster claims processing. Verisk's Government Relations team collaborates with product specialists to educate regulators and legislators on the importance and utility of these tools, including wildfire risk management. The team has engaged with regulators in 13 western, wildfire-prone states and launched a well-received webinar series covering topics like building codes and catastrophe modeling, enhancing Verisk's reputation as a thought leader.
Verisk's emerging issues team continues to monitor a wide range of developments and trends to help insurers and risk management professionals better identify and understand the risk exposures of the future. Among the topics they spotlighted during 2024: the growing risk of subsidence (sinking of land) and damage to hazardous waste sites, the challenges and opportunities facing America's aging electrical grid, and how some states are preparing homeowners for the climate crisis by focusing on mitigating damage from high winds.
Enhancing Governance for Responsible Business
To better organize and delineate oversight of specific risk categories, the Board formed a new Risk Committee in early 2024 which, in coordination with the Audit Committee, oversees risk assessment and risk management of the company, reviews with management matters relating to the policies, practices, and outcomes of the company that relate to risk management such as strategies associated with cyber and information security risk, and oversees the company's Enterprise Risk Management function.
In 2024, Verisk published the Report on Company Payments, 2021-2023: Political Contributions, Trade Associations, and Lobbying Related, a new report to increase transparency with our shareholders and customers around our spending. In compliance with our Anti-Bribery and Corruption Policy, we made no political contributions to candidates, parties, or committees between 2021 and 2023. An updated version of the report is planned to come out in 2025.
The company also published our Commitment to Ethical and Responsible Artificial Intelligence ("AI"). The disclosure details our human-centered values and approach to AI development, our Ethical AI principles, AI governance structure, AI standards, and the AI review processes, among other items. The framework is consistent with our core corporate governance processes to implement strategy, operations, and risk management practices throughout the organization.
Supporting our Employees
Our employees are at the heart of what we do. Our global workforce is united by our mission to serve, add value, and innovate for customers. We continue to invest in our people worldwide by encouraging all employees to reach their full potential through a focus on learning, providing competitive compensation and benefits, and a culture anchored on our purpose-driven values of learning, caring, and results.
For the ninth consecutive year, Verisk received certification from Great Place To Work® for outstanding workplace culture in the United States. Verisk received fifth-time certification in the United Kingdom, Spain, and India, and third-time certification in Poland. Verisk's employee engagement score for 2024 was 78%.
As a knowledge-based business, we carefully develop and integrate the skills and talents of our global employees, ensuring that we provide them with opportunities to grow within the company. In 2024, we continued to prioritize career development across the company by utilizing an employee-centric strategy based on feedback from employees and managers. We further developed a Career Framework and supporting tools and training, to provide clarity on jobs across all our businesses and functions. The Career Framework education sessions were attended by over 3,000 colleagues, providing them insights on how to navigate their careers at Verisk.
In 2024, we continued to work to improve our employees' health, safety, and well-being with the launch of Engagement Rx, a global digital health and wellness coaching platform offering access to online wellness courses, stress management, and mental health awareness resources. We also offered two wellness days and early closure in the summer (summer Fridays) to support our employees' personal well-being.
Shaping our Environmental Journey
Reducing our environmental impact is an ongoing journey. As a data and analytics company, we don't have a significant environmental footprint, but we are in the business of risk management. Therefore, we recognize the importance of continually minimizing our environmental and climate impacts and risks while enhancing efficiencies. This commitment aligns with our vision of shaping a resilient future for our clients and communities.
As of January 2025, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has validated that the science-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions targets submitted by Verisk conform with the SBTi Corporate Net Zero Standard. Verisk has committed to reach net-zero GHG emissions across the value chain by 2050 and set near-term science-based targets.
For the seventh consecutive year, we balanced 100% of our CDP-reported Scope 1, 2, and 3 (business air travel and downstream leased assets) GHG emissions by reducing companywide energy consumption and investing in renewable energy credits. We've exceeded our target to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 21% by 2024.
Verisk conducted its first high-level nature risk assessment at the beginning of 2025, with the goal of better understanding the risk to our office footprint in the context of natural capital. Verisk Maplecroft conducted the exercise and used their Environmental Risk Data, specifically their data on natural capital, to provide a comprehensive view of Verisk's exposure to risks today related to air quality, terrestrial biodiversity and protected areas, deforestation, water pollution, and water stress for all Verisk offices in operation as of December 31, 2024. Results show that Verisk's offices are primarily located in areas at low exposure to biodiversity and deforestation risk, but more exposed to water stress and water pollution.
To learn more about these initiatives and many others, visit Verisk's Sustainability Resources and Reporting Hub or download the 2024 Verisk Corporate Responsibility Report.
Great Place To Work®, the Great Place To Work Logo®, (and any other GPTW trademarks used) are trademarks of Great Place To Work Institute Inc. claimed as such and/or registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and elsewhere. All other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective holders. Any use of GPTW trademarks requires prior written approval from GPTW. GPTW can be reached by e-mail [email protected].
2024 Performance Snapshot*
$2,681.4 2023 $1,433.5
† Represents continuing operations view
2024 Revenue Contribution
$0.86B
Forms, Rules, and Loss Costs
Underwriting Data Analytics Solutions
New Growth Vectors 1
Extreme Event Solutions
Specialty Business Solutions
Property Estimating Solutions
Anti-Fraud
Casualty
Claims International
1. New Growth Vectors include Life, Marketing, and Underwriting Solutions International
Creating Substantial Client Value Through Data & Innovation
Connecting the global insurance ecosystem
36+
billion
Our statistical database grew to more than 36 billion premium and loss records, providing insurers with critical data insight
1.8
billion
More than 1.8 billion claims have been contributed to our antifraud database, which enables the insurance industry to efficiently detect suspicious activities
143
million
Our personal property database grew to 143 million personal property data records
Driving industry efficiency
12,300
legislative actions
We review 12,300 legislative actions and 16,000 regulatory actions each year to inform policy language and rating information
Building resilience around the world
$151
billion
Average annual insured loss from natural catastrophes, captured in analysis using Verisk's extreme event solutions models
36
thousand
Fire protection services data for 36,000 jurisdictions
120+
countries & territories
Our catastrophe models cover more than 120 countries and territories
40
million
We complete 40 million medical risk assessments annually for applicants of travel and health insurance globally
45+
million
We've received more than 45 million claims assignments in the last five years
Disclaimer
Verisk Analytics Inc. published this content on April 04, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via , unedited and unaltered, on April 04, 2025 at 14:00 UTC.