Every year, water damage costs insurers over $16 billion. One leaky toilet can waste more than a million gallons annually and emit 46 tons of carbon. Yet, in most buildings, water is an unmanaged asset, often ignored until it causes financial or environmental harm. When we treat water as a strategic resource, it becomes a lever for risk reduction, sustainability, and operational efficiency.
I recently joined Jeffrey C. O’Shaughnessy, President of Portfolio Risk Solutions, on HSB’s New Ways of Thinking podcast to explore this topic. Listen here: HSB Podcast.
Water In Buildings Is Fundamentally Unmanaged And Highly Wasteful
In commercial buildings, construction sites, and multifamily residences, water flows through thousands of pipes, joints, and fixtures. These systems are largely invisible, yet they pose significant risk. An average of 25% of water that enters buildings goes to waste. In extreme cases, we’ve seen waste rates approach 70%.
This leads to operational inefficiencies and financial losses. On construction sites, a single poorly installed fixture or temporary pipe failure can result in millions in damage. In existing buildings, undetected leaks can damage infrastructure, disrupt operations, and lead to spiraling insurance costs. At one landmark property, early detection by a smart system prevented a failure that could have impacted dozens of floors.
The Problem With Dumb Pipes
“Water in buildings is in most cases an unmanaged asset.”
Most buildings operate with water systems that are completely blind. Pipes, valves, and fixtures are passive infrastructure, which means that they don’t tell you when something is wrong, and they certainly don’t prevent disasters. These so-called “dumb pipes” allow leaks, waste, and inefficiencies to go undetected until damage is already done or losses have accumulated.
Facility teams often discover leaks only after receiving inflated water bills or stumbling across damage. There’s no built-in alerting, no real-time diagnostics, and no ability to shut off the water proactively. It’s a reactive model, and as with anything unmanaged, water ends up doing what it wants, not what you need it to do.
Until now, the industry has accepted this as the status quo. But with the right technology, it’s possible to bring intelligence, insight, and control to every drop of water that enters a building.
Introducing Smart Water Management
Intelligent water management systems, like Wint, are now capable of monitoring all major water systems in a building, including domestic, HVAC, irrigation, and more. By analyzing flow patterns and learning what “normal” looks like, these systems can detect anomalies in real time and automatically trigger alerts or shutoff responses.
Designing these systems isn’t one-size-fits-all. Engineers must tailor deployments to match building layouts, usage patterns, and risk tolerances. But the goal is consistent: detect issues early, act fast, and minimize impact.
Insurance Risk, Measurable Results
For insurers, water damage is one of the most persistent and expensive risks they face today, costing the industry tens of billions of dollars annually. These aren’t rare, once-in-a-decade disasters, they’re frequent, everyday incidents caused by leaky pipes, and undetected faults in plumbing systems. Construction sites and commercial buildings are especially vulnerable, where even a single mistake can lead to massive losses.
That’s why insurers are investing in technology solutions that reduce loss frequency and severity. Wint provides a data-driven, intelligent water management platform that not only detects leaks, but prevents them from turning into catastrophic events.
A joint study with Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurers, found that buildings using Wint saw a 73% drop in claim frequency and a 90% reduction in total payouts for water damage. These are validated results based on side-by-side comparisons of buildings with and without Wint. This performance is why HSB, a Munich Re company and leader in engineering-based insurance, backs Wint with a performance warranty covering up to $250 million in damages, the only such warranty in the industry.
Water Waste Is a Climate Issue
Beyond insurance, water waste is an environmental threat. In the U.S., 13% of electricity is used to deliver and treat water. Every wasted cubic meter contributes to carbon emissions. With climate change accelerating, adaptation is critical, and that starts with reducing waste.
In one instance, Wint detected an underground irrigation leak at an Ivy League university. The system had been losing $16,000 in water monthly, which went unnoticed by anyone until our alerts flagged it. These hidden losses add up, and the environmental costs are even higher.
Wint customers typically reduce water consumption by 20% to 25%. And our technology directly contributes to green building certifications like LEED, boosting scores by up to 15 points. That translates into higher asset value, improved tenant satisfaction, and stronger ESG performance.
A Smarter Way Forward
Water has long been the blind spot in building management, but that’s changing. Owners, insurers, and regulators are now demanding smarter infrastructure that prioritizes resilience, sustainability, and risk prevention. As adoption accelerates, intelligent water management is moving from a nice-to-have to a non-negotiable.
At Wint, we believe that in just a few years, smart water systems will be as standard as elevators or fire protection. We’re proud to lead that shift and help organizations protect their assets, reduce waste, and treat water not as an afterthought, but as a strategic priority.
To listen to the full conversation on HSB’s New Ways of Thinking podcast, click here.
To learn more about Wint, request a demo.
