Agenda

May 14 Sessions

May 15 Sessions

May 16 Sessions

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Activities

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Breakfast
 

Twenty Years of Catastrophe Risk Modeling ̶ Looking Back and Moving Forward
Hemant Shah, President & CEO, RMS
 

The Evolution of the Catastrophe Insurance Market
Guest Speaker ̶  VJ Dowling, Managing Director, Dowling & Partners Securities
 

Break
 

BREAKOUT SESSIONS

U.K. Inland Flood Model ̶ Hazard and Vulnerability Review

In 2008, RMS is releasing a major upgrade of the U.K. River Flood Model, which builds on modeling advancements in the 2006 Germany River Flood Model, and offers high-resolution VRG-based flood modeling through 10-meter grid Digital Terrain Models (DTM). This is the first comprehensive upgrade since 2001 in which all components of the model are being rebuilt to incorporate the latest methodologies and innovations at RMS, as well as significant new data. This session will provide a detailed look at both the latest hazard and vulnerability modeling techniques being implemented, including the new rainfall model and dynamical rainfall-runoff components, the expanded floodplain model, improved defense and off-floodplain modeling, as well as how these combine with the vulnerability updates to improve risk differentiation and probabilistic loss estimates.

Advancements in Developing a Detailed Data Validation Database**

Following the data quality issues highlighted by the 2004/2005 hurricanes, the development of a high quality database of commercial properties with building attributes was identified as a key priority for RMS by our clients. In response, RMS has developed a database of building attributes for the United States. This session describes the process of developing the database and its applications, and focuses on the challenges in compiling a large database from multiple external third party data sources as well as internal development efforts. The process of populating the database, development of confidence scores for each of the building attributes, and validation using remote sensing, photo interpretation, and field surveys will be discussed. (Repeated Wednesday at 1:30 pm)

Making More Effective Underwriting Decisions Using Cat Modeling Products**

Effective catastrophe underwriting is a key driver of profitability for P&C insurance companies. It is also, if done well, a tremendous source of competitive advantage. However, Cat underwriting is also hard to do well particularly since there is an inherent tension created by the need to quote quickly against the need to properly assess the risks that are being presented, as well as quickly optimize the new risk against the company’s portfolio strategy. In this session, we will present a model case study that demonstrates how data quality, real-time accumulation management, and account model analyses can be efficiently interwoven and fed into portfolio management to increase the effectiveness of catastrophe underwriting and drive its use as a source of competitive advantage. The related session "Using the RMS Suite for Optimizing End-to-End Portfolio Management" focuses on the portfolio management strategy and how that feeds into building efficient underwriting guidelines to inform underwriting decisions. (Repeated Friday at 9:30 am)

Scope of the 2009 North America Earthquake Model Upgrades**

For 2009, RMS has embarked on an ambitious agenda to develop, update, and expand its earthquake modeling throughout North America. Stretching seamlessly from Canada through Mexico, and eventually throughout South America, the project will provide a consistent, comprehensive solution for analyzing seismic risk. This session will review the depth and breadth of the project scope, from USGS hazard map updates and RMS innovations in the North American vulnerability analysis that enhance underwriting applications to how these enhancements inform the regional portfolio modeling in areas of more aggregate exposure data. In addition to scope and key technical highlights, the session will also outline the change management plan for countries with existing RMS models. (Repeated Friday at 9:30 am)

Building the WindX U.S. Hurricane Index
Guest Speaker ̶  Buck Lyons, CEO, WeatherFlow

In 2007 RMS partnered with WeatherFlow, the leading expert in installing and maintaining networks of wind stations, to build a vast network of wind speed measurement stations for a broad set of applications, including parametric risk transfer. Phase I of the project is now complete, which includes 50 stations in Florida and 7 in Houston. The completion of Phase I also brings the launch of both the WindX and Paradex U.S. Hurricane index solutions. This session will review why the stations needed to be built and how they have been constructed to survive strong winds or sabotage. Uses of the network for building parametric securities and settling transactions will also be discussed.

Intro to Terrorism Modeling

This session provides an overview of the key components of terrorism risk. The primary focus is on how to assess and model terrorism as an insurable peril by defining a framework for characterizing and evaluating the risk. This session is recommended for new users and individuals preparing for the RMS CAT Program.
 

Lunch
 

BREAKOUT SESSIONS

U.K. Inland Flood Model ̶ Changes in Loss**

The 2008 upgrade of the U.K. Inland Flood Model builds on the major modeling advancements made by RMS since the original model release in 2001, such as those implemented for the Germany River Flood Model in 2006. This session will provide a detailed look at the impact of integrating new modeling technology and data on model results and the landscape of inland flood risk across the British Isles. The session will discuss the drivers of change in industry-level results regionally as well as across lines of business and coverage types between the current and new model. (Repeated Friday at 10:45 am)

Driving the Best Value from RMS Geocoding**

As geocoding technology becomes more broadly used across the enterprise, the importance of consistently accurate geocoding has never been more important. RMS geocoding products have been designed with global geographic accuracy as the highest priority. This session covers how RMS is pursuing this goal now and into the future, so that users can derive the most value from geocoding. Best practices for geocoding and driving results in risk differentiation will be the core of the session. Examples include account triage, underwriting, accumulations, and modeling. Additional topics will include comparisons to commercially available applications and well-known internet products and flexible access/workflow integration options. (Repeated Friday at 10:45 am)

Using the RMS Suite to Optimize End-to-End Portfolio Management**

Using a hurricane exposed book of business as an example, this session will walk the audience through an end-to-end portfolio management workflow that provides insight into the integrated use of multiple RMS data products (e. g. geocoding and building level data), services (e.g. outsourced data quality and peril model analyses), and applications (e.g. RiskLink, Reinsurance Platform, RiskTools, customized data visualization tools). An often overlooked result of the portfolio management process is its unique ability to inform the underwriting process. This presentation will show how the assessment of data quality metrics, accumulation zone refinements, optimal pricing guidelines, and meaningful reporting enables an effective portfolio management strategy with a targeted workflow optimization and product use. The related session "Making More Effective Underwriting Decisions using Cat Modeling Products" focuses on the underwriting strategy and how the underwriting process feeds into portfolio management operations. (Repeated Friday at 10:45 am)

Implications for the 2009 U.S. Earthquake Model Upgrade**

Revisions to the RMS U.S. Earthquake Model represent the most significant component of the broader 2009 Americas Earthquake Model updates. While catalyzed by the 2007 USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project, the update comprises a much broader range of advances to the science and art of earthquake risk modeling. The Next Generation Attenuation (NGA) project, more sophisticated approaches to site response, cutting-edge applications of structure modeling, and continuing RMS research into post-event loss amplification each contribute to a more comprehensive view of risk. This session will provide insights into this ongoing development work, exploring some of these key technical components that will contribute to changes in loss results when the final model is released. (Repeated Friday at 10:45 am)

Building Intuition with RMS RiskManager

Sophisticated catastrophe risk managers understand that it is important to have an exposure-based view of risk in addition to a probabilistic event-based view. RMS RiskManager allows clients to keep up-to-date with advances in sophisticated exposure management techniques. Attend this session to learn how companies are using RiskManager to view accumulations after applying limits and deductibles, implement scenario-based accumulation rules, build customized hazard-based accumulation zones, easily run what-if scenarios, and gain insight into the risk of non-modeled perils.

Intro to the RMS Financial Model

A solid understanding of the key financial statistics provided in RMS products is critical to interpreting model results. This session will review the key components of the financial model, and will discuss the interpretation and application of the EP Curve and Statistics. Finally, it will discuss how RiskLink results (EP Curves and Statistics) should be used and interpreted. This session is recommended for new users and individuals preparing for the RMS CAT Program.
 

Break
 

BREAKOUT SESSIONS

Modeling Event Clustering**

Event independence is a key premise of catastrophe loss models. There is however a growing body of evidence both anecdotal and from rigorous scientific studies that demonstrate an apparent relationship between loss events both in space and time. This presentation will discuss RMS research into event interdependence for European and U.S. windstorms, focusing both on the physical mechanisms for clustering and the implication for modeling the sources of dependency. We will demonstrate the impact of clustering via the RMS simulation methodology and show the impact on example reinsurance contracts. Future developments for a multi-peril perspective afforded by a flexible simulation approach to hazard modeling will also be discussed. (Repeated Friday at 10:45 am)

Data Quality Trends in the Market**

In the past year, RMS has been working closely with clients to assess and review the quality of their exposure data. This session will discuss some of the findings from those engagements, including: common data problems in the market, the impact of geocoding resolution, the impact of missing or unknown data, and data biases. It will also review best practice methods for assessing data accuracy and running sensitivity analyses to help understand the variation in model results due to data quality issues. The discussion will cover issues related to both personal lines and commercial lines, with relevance for both primary and reinsurance companies.  (Repeated Wednesday at 2:45 pm)

Meeting Your Underwriting Goals Using RiskBrowser^® 8.0

This session will provide insight into how you can use new and enhanced capabilities in RiskBrowser 8.0 to both meet underwriting goals and to improve underwriting processes. This session will review features that enable roll-out of RiskBrowser to individuals across your organization and across business units while limiting access to only that business unit's exposure and results data, the ability to more efficiently search and find existing accounts in the system, new options to customize RiskBrowser installation, the ability to capture useful data elements to make exposure data more complete, geocoding workflow enhancements, and other features. A case study will also be used to show how the accumulation management enhancements in RiskBrowser 8.0 can help you identify new concentrations with each new account underwritten and how you can better manage risk concentrations.

Super Cat Loss Modeling

Hurricane Katrina served as a modern-day reminder of how cascades of contingent and random sub-events can combine with a major catastrophe to form extreme disaster scenarios. Since Katrina, RMS has continued to review the causes and implications for Super Cats. This session will review RMS research on Super Cats, and a methodology for estimating losses to individual policies, based on the causative peril or sub-peril (e.g. ground shaking or fire-following), and estimates for disruption time. It will also suggest how this framework of analysis can help in estimating contingent BI, based on an approach that includes a model of supply chain dependencies for local and regional suppliers.

Querying Data from RiskLink^® Tables**

Viewing data from within RiskLink is a very effective method to analyze exposure and results data, but with just a basic knowledge of Microsoft Access or SQL, you can take analyzing RiskLink data to a new level. The focus of this session will be to provide basic techniques on how to query data directly from the back-end tables. We will examine how to extract primary exposure characteristics as well as common industry loss metrics. In addition, we will explore some uncommon methods for unlocking data from RiskLink. (Repeated Wednesday at 2:45 pm)

Intro to Accumulation Management

The intent of this session is to strengthen the participant's understanding of the fundamental concepts used in RiskLink's accumulation management capabilities. With a sound grasp of the fundamentals, participants will be positioned to effectively use the accumulation functionality to support traditional capacity management and monitoring tasks. The session will compare and contrast the accumulation methodology with the fundamentals of catastrophe modeling. The discussion will also focus on analysis assumptions, terminology and results interpretation. This session is recommended for new users and individuals preparing for the RMS CAT Program.
 

Break
 

Challenges in Modeling Climate Hazards
Dr. Steve Jewson, Vice President, Model Development, RMS
 

Conference Dinner