2015

You can't forecast earthquakes the way you can hurricanes or floods, but Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems may be the next best thing.

Boston is basically a hill in a harbor surrounded by low-lying land reclaimed from salt marsh (fens) in the 1800s. In addition to hurricane and earthquake risk, it is increasingly threatened by flood.

Insurers writing business in the U.S. face a different set of rate filing rules and regulatory requirements in each state and the District of Columbia. It was the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 that set the stage for state-based regulation of insurance in the U.S.—a contrast to most other countries in the world where the insurance industry is regulated at the country level.

While the name may conjure up images of moats and drawbridges, a FORTIFIED Home™ is actually a new or existing house strengthened against specific natural hazards. FORTIFIED Home is a national program designed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) to improve the resilience of buildings and reduce insurance losses.

The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has undergone many changes and improvements in recent years, starting with the Biggert-Waters Reform Act of 2012. Some of the most notable changes include revising existing rates and updating mapping information, which changed flood classifications for some policyholders.

Previously, comparing one set of loss results to another involved a cumbersome, manual process performed outside of the software. Now, Touchstone 3.0 includes an exciting new feature—Comparative Analytics—that, when used in conjunction with detailed loss analysis, lets Touchstone do the work for you, quickly and efficiently.

For centuries we have fought flooding with defenses and suffered the consequences when they fail. But increasingly engineers and designers are looking into sustainable ways to cope with floodwater—to roll with it rather than trying to fight a losing battle against it.

My London colleague Tristan Lloyd blogged recently about the UK-based Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT), which was then busy initiating its response to the April 25 earthquake near Gorkha in Nepal. EEFIT sent observers to the region to observe earthquake damage and collect data so they could report findings to the wider engineering community.

My colleague Tim Doggett and I recently traveled to London to participate in a Risk Prediction Initiative 2.0 workshop on Atlantic Hurricane Volatility. Several of the leading academic scientists who study tropical cyclones were there, as well as scientists from other catastrophe risk modeling companies and reinsurers.

During the third week of June this year, AIR's London Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS) Team attended the annual Convergence London seminar and Trading Risk Awards Dinner, which reviews and celebrates the past year's activity in the reinsurance and convergence markets.