Risk Modeling Firm Verisk Cancels Live Event Over Virus, Goes Virtual for Cyber Seminar

Insurance data analytics and risk modeling firm Verisk has converted its Cyber and Casualty Seminar scheduled for March 10 in New York City from an in-person to a free virtual event “out of an abundance of caution over the global spread of the novel coronavirus.”

Registrants for the Verisk cyber event that was to be held at the Westin Hotel received this notification:

“While there is limited confirmed exposure in the New York City area at this time, we are taking this precaution out of concern for the safety of our attendees and staff; doing so also limits travel and helps ensure we are not contributing to further the spread of the virus and remain available to support our families and communities in case of need.”

The agenda calls for presentations on the cyber and casualty landscape from executives from several Verisk subsidiaries including AIR Worldwide, the risk modeling firm, and ISO, the insurance information and policy form company.

Verisk’s change in plans comes a day after Insurance Journal reported that for other insurance event sponsors, it’s mostly business-as-usual with organizers taking precautions due to the coronavirus risk but still planning on holding their in-person conferences. Insurance Journal found that the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute, Insurance Innovators and Property Liability Resource Bureau have no plans to cancel their live meetings scheduled this week and next week.

It now appears the insurance conference landscape may be changing.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday that the number of people in the state ill with the coronavirus had risen to six.

Yesterday, the risk modelers at Verisk’s AIR Worldwide issued a report on their own predictive model’s estimate of the current number of COVID-19 cases worldwide.

According to AIR Worldwide, the number of moderately symptomatic cases of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 in China on March 3 could range between 50,000 and 170,000, and the number of severe cases in China on March 3 could range between 20,000 and 80,000, with deaths ranging from 4,000 to 12,500. These estimations outside of China are 7,000 to 19,000 moderately symptomatic, 3,000 to 10,000 severely symptomatic, and 500 to 6,000 deaths.

“In countries with robust healthcare systems, any imported cases would most likely be contained with few or no transmissions to additional people—provided that cases are rapidly identified, and appropriate infection control protocols are followed. However, the current increase in the number of cases in some countries outside of China shows that there has been silent transmission that started in clusters and expanded to communities before health officials were able to contain them completely,” Dr. Narges Dorratoltaj, senior scientist at AIR, said in the statement accompanying the risk report.

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• Fitch Sees Only ‘Modest Impact’ on U.S. P/C Insurance from Coronavirus
• AIR Worldwide Uses Pandemic Model to Determine Countries at Highest Risk

Topics Cyber New York China COVID-19 Risk Management