The RMS report, ‘Terrorism Risk in the Post-9/11 Era’, highlights that the global terrorism threat in the last decade has become more diverse, and more dispersed, but no less deadly. Since the attacks of 9/11, there have been more than 2,400 macro terrorism attacks (defined as attacks with the minimum fatalities of twenty people) committed in more than 40 countries worldwide. While the Middle East and South Asia regions are still the epicenter of the threat, terrorist attacks extend far beyond these areas. This dispersion of threat is largely due to the activities of Al-Qaeda and its diverse affiliates within the Salafi-jihadi movement.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the way terrorism risk is managed has also evolved. “Over the last decade, the insurance industry has become much more comfortable using loss models to manage terrorism risk. Insurers are managing accumulations using realistic scenarios and event-specific footprints to monitor exposure across multiple lines of business,” commented Peter Ulrich, senior vice president of emerging risk solutions at RMS.
Probabilistic models – similar to those used to understand natural catastrophe risk – are also gaining traction. Today, the wealth of research and development on terrorism risk has also enabled probabilistic terrorism models to shift from a reliance on expert opinion to an objective methodology to assess the terrorism threat.
The report brings together RMS’ terrorism modeling experts to share their perspectives on the evolution of the terrorism threat, its impact on the insurance industry, and the future of terrorism risk; and discusses the tools and best practices that help insurers manage this risk in a post-9/11 era. Key issues covered in the report are as follows:
– The post-9/11 global terrorism landscape – a review of how the global terrorism landscape has evolved since 9/11, analyzing terrorism patterns, themes, and trends
– Evaluating the Al-Qaeda threat to the U.S. since 9/11 – an outline of Al-Qaeda’s CBRN development efforts in the last decade and the probability of Al-Qaeda launching a successful attack today
– The post-9/11 U.S. counterterrorism landscape – U.S. homeland security initiatives and how the U.S. counterterrorism landscape may change in the future
– Modeling terrorism frequency – an overview of frequency modeling and its underlying methodology to illustrate how frequency estimates can be robustly modeled
– Quantifying and managing terrorism risk – the evolution of terrorism risk management and how approaches to underwriting and managing terrorism risk have evolved since the 9/11 attacks
Source : RMS Press Release
