Aon Benfield, Impact Forecasting Launch Cat Risk Tool

September 4, 2012

Aon Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary and capital advisor of Aon plc, announced that it has launched “ELEMENTS 7, the loss calculation platform from Impact Forecasting, which enables insurers to more easily customize catastrophe models.”

The bulletin explained that the platform will enable insurers to “incorporate their own views on the risk of property damage through customized vulnerability curves, based on their actual loss experience or current portfolio. This in turn produces estimates of potential financial losses that help to better inform and influence reinsurance buying strategies.”

Aon Benfield noted that the “architectural features to the ELEMENTS 7 platform have been developed in response to a growing desire for transparency within catastrophe risk assessment, including improved understanding of non-modeled perils and the proposed Solvency II regulations in the European Union. The platform is also beneficial where insurers have existing business or wish to expand into territories where models do not currently exist.

“The platform gives insurers access to Impact Forecasting’s 30 catastrophe models spanning over 20 territories and six key perils. ELEMENTS 7 gives access to insight on territories worldwide, including for the peak risk zones and the newly released models for Turkish and Moroccan earthquake and German storm surge.”

ELEMENTS 7, Aon Benfield noted, provides the following three key benefits for insurers:
— TRANSPARENCY – its well-documented structure means every step of the calculation process is clearly defined and can be understood.
— CUSTOMIZABLE – ability to achieve loss estimates that are more aligned with a company’s loss history by creating customized vulnerability curves, in addition to hazard frequency and severity parameters.
— FLEXIBILITY – applications from scenario loss calculation to full probabilistic models, with improved analysis speed due to flexible client-server platform.

Steve Jakubowski, President of Impact Forecasting, explained: “Catastrophe modeling platforms of the 21st century are rapidly evolving. In particular, the open-box feature of ELEMENTS 7 is fundamental for insurers to both fully understand the modeling process and modify the parts they wish to make more relevant to their own needs. In today’s climate there is a hunger for transparent, customizable and flexible solutions, and ELEMENTS caters to each of these requirements with 12 years’ proven experience.”

Adam Podlaha, international head of Impact Forecasting, commented on the possibility of using ELEMENTS 7 to integrate insurers’ internal models: “The majority of insurance and reinsurance companies need to verify model results by running their own Probable Maximum Loss/scenario events. ELEMENTS 7 enables them to do exactly that within a very short time and in a process that can be embedded into the company to ensure continuity.”

Source: Aon Benfield

Topics Carriers Aon

Was this article valuable?

Here are more articles you may enjoy.