Impact Forecasting, Aon Benfield’s catastrophe model development centre of excellence, has launched the first fully functional Asian typhoon model to span the continent.
The new model will help insurers analyse the financial implications of typhoons and develop reinsurance programs based on scientific principles. Typhoons are a major peril in Asia due to their severity and frequency. With rapidly growing property exposures across the region, insurers and reinsurers need more comprehensive and up to date tools to quantify and manage the risks that typhoons bring to their business.
The new model covers the Asian typhoon exposed regions of China, Hong Kong, India, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, including tropical cyclones generated in the Northern Indian Ocean and the North West Pacific Ocean. As such it has been developed to provide insight for companies with multi-territory exposures including regional insurers, global reinsurance buyers and reinsurers.
Estimated losses are produced for:
• residential, commercial, engineering and industrial classes;
• building structure, contents and business interruption;
• structural damage from wind, effects of storm surge on coastal regions and water damage as a result of a tropical cyclone rain.
Will Gardner, Head of Aon Benfield Analytics in Asia Pacific, said: “The new model, being the first completed of its kind, sets a platform for future scientific and engineering investments in the region. Current models focus on specific territories so we took advantage of the combined data and skills from the Aon Benfield teams to enable re/insurers to take a broader look at their multi-country portfolios. A notable feature of the model is our engineering-based damage functions which have been extensively validated against a range of historic events in Asia and around the globe.”
Adam Podlaha, Head of Impact Forecasting’s International team at Aon Benfield, added: “The new model enhances the suite of Impact Forecasting’s models in Asia Pacific which help re/insurers to quantify potential losses. Furthermore, our models are not ‘black boxes’, meaning we can modify assumptions and parameters based on individual client needs.”
