Weather risk management, reinsurance, and other financial industries and markets face a number of problems and challenges in their development and expansion. Many of these obstacles are related to (1) their ability to obtain detailed, reliable, accurate, timely, and secure pictures of the weather elements necessary for the range of applications of interest to the industries, and (2) to the availability of consistent probability forecasts with well-understood performance characteristics on the time scales and at the locations pertinent to the applications. Here the focus will be on both short-term and long-term National Weather Service solutions to the problems in the form of changes to existing observing system and forecast services and development of new services. A particular focus of the presentation will be on how the modernization of the Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) network will substantially enhance the usability of the network for weather risk management. In particular the enormous potential for enhancement of real-time quantitative precipitation monitoring will be described.