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Helen YatesSeptember 05, 2018
The future for flood protection
The future for flood protection
The Future for Flood Protection
September 05, 2018

With innovation in the flood market increasing, EXPOSURE explores whether high-definition (HD) flood models are one of the keys to closing the protection gap In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey brought the highest level of rainfall associated with a tropical cyclone in the U.S. since records began, causing catastrophic flooding in some of the most populated areas of the Texas coast, including Houston. The percentage of losses attributed to inland flood versus wind damage was significant, altering the historical view that precipitation resulting from a tropical storm or hurricane is an attritional loss and highlighting the need for stochastic modeling. Total economic losses resulting from Harvey were around US$85 billion and insured losses were US$30 billion, revealing a significant protection gap, particularly where inland flood damage was concerned. Around 200,000 homes were inundated by the floods, and yet 80 percent of homes in the Houston area were uninsured. Hurricane Harvey Impacts – Aftermath An innovative catastrophe bond has suggested one way this protection gap could be reduced in the future, particularly as a private flood insurance market develops in the U.S. FloodSmart Re, which was announced at the end of July 2018, secured US$500 million of reinsurance protection on behalf of FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Reinsurer Hannover Re was acting as the ceding reinsurer for the transaction, sitting between the NFIP and its Bermuda-based special purpose insurer. “It’s a landmark transaction — the first time in history that the U.S. federal government is sponsoring a catastrophe bond,” says John Seo, co-founder and managing principal at Fermat Capital. “It’s just tremendous and I couldn’t be more excited. Events like Harvey are going to accelerate the development of the flood market in terms of risk transfer to the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market. “You have to have more efficient risk pooling and risk sharing mechanisms,” he adds. “There’s over US$200 trillion dollars of capital in the world, so there’s obviously enough to efficiently absorb event risk. So, it’s about, how do you get it out into that larger capital base in an efficient way?” While the bond only provides cover for flooding arising from named storms, either due to storm surge or rainfall, it is a “good test case for the ILS market’s appetite for flood risks,” according to ILS blog Artemis. While “it is not a broad flood coverage, it will likely help to make it more palatable to cat bond investors given their comfort with modeling the probability of named storms, tropical storms and hurricanes.” According to Cory Anger, global head of ILS origination and structuring at GC Securities, the ILS market is certainly showing an appetite for flood risk — including inland flood risk ­— with several catastrophe bonds completed during 2017 for European flood risk (Generali’s Lion II), Japanese flood risk (MSI and ADI’s Akibare Series 2018-1 Notes) and U.S. flood risk. “Both public and private sector entities see value from utilizing capital markets’ capacity to manage flood risk,” she says. “We think there are other geographic regions that would be interested in ILS capacity that haven’t yet tapped the ILS markets. Given the recent success of FEMA/NFIP’s FloodSmart Re Series 2018-1 Notes, we expect FEMA/NFIP to continue to utilize ILS capacity (along with traditional reinsurance capital) to support future U.S. flood risk transfer opportunities.” The ILS sector has grown significantly over the past 15 years, with deals becoming more complex and innovative over time. Many market commentators feel the market was put to the test following the major natural catastrophe losses in 2017. Not only did bonds pay out where they were triggered, fresh capital re-entered, demonstrating investors’ confidence in the sector and its products. “I’m hearing people starting to coin the phrase that 2018 is the ‘great reload,’” says Seo. “This is something I have been saying for quite some years: That the traditional hard-soft, soft-hard market cycle is over. It’s not that you can’t have an event so large that it doesn’t impact the market, but when it comes to capital markets, high yields are actually a siren call for capital. “I don’t think anyone doubts that had 2017 occurred in the absence of the ILS market it would have been a completely different story, and we would have had a traditional hard market scenario in 2018,” he adds. FloodSmart Re has clearly demonstrated the strong investor interest in such transactions. According to Anger, GC Securities acted as the structuring agent for the transaction and was one of two book runners. More than 35 capital markets investors provided fully collateralized protection to FEMA/NFIP on the landmark catastrophe bond. “The appetite for new perils is generally strong, so there’s always strong interest when new risks are brought to market,” says Ben Brookes, managing director of capital and resilience solutions at RMS. He thinks improvements in the underlying data quality along with high-definition flood models make it more likely that inland flood could be included as a peril in future catastrophe bond issuances on behalf of private insurers, on an indemnity basis. “In the early days of the cat bond market, new perils would typically be issued with parametric triggers, because investors were skeptical that sufficient data quality was achieved or that the indemnity risks were adequately captured by cat models. But that changed as investor comfort grew, and a lot of capital entered the market and you saw all these deals becoming indemnity. Increased comfort with risk modeling was a big part of that.” The innovative Blue Wings catastrophe bond, which covered insurer Allianz for severe U.K. flood risk (and some U.S. and Canadian quake) and was completed in 2007, is a good example. The parametric bond used an index to calculate flood depths at over 50 locations across the U.K., was ahead of its time and is the only U.K. flood catastrophe bond that has come to market. According to Anger, as models have become more robust for flood risk — whether due to tropical cyclone (storm surge and excess precipitation) or inland flooding (other than from tropical cyclone) ­— the investor base has been open to trigger selection (e.g., indemnity or parametric). “In general, insurers are preferring indemnity-triggered solutions,” she adds, “which the ILS market has concurrently been open to. Additionally, for this peril, the ILS community has been open to per occurrence and annual aggregate structures, which gives flexibility to sponsors to incorporate ILS capital in their risk transfer programs.” As the private market develops, cat bond sponsors from the insurance market would be more likely to bundle inland flood risk in with other perils, thinks Charlotte Acton, director of capital and resilience solutions at RMS. “A degree of hurricane-induced inland flood risk is already present on a non-modeled basis within some transactions in the market,” she says. “And Harvey illustrates the value in comprehensive modeling of flooding associated with named storms. “So, for a broader portfolio, in most cases, inland flood would be one piece of the picture as it will be exposed to multiple perils. However, a stand-alone inland flood bond is possible for a public sector or corporate sponsor that has specific exposure to flood risk.” With inland flood, as with all other perils, sophisticated models help to make markets. “A fund would look at the risk in and of itself in the deal, but of course they’d also want to understand the price and returns perspective as well,” says Brookes. “Models play into that quite heavily. You can’t price a bond well, and understand the returns of a bond, unless you understand the risk of it.” As the ILS market makes increasing use of indemnity protection through ultimate net loss (UNL) triggers, sophisticated HD flood modeling will be essential in order to transfer the peril to the capital markets. This allows clear parameters to be set around different hours clauses and deductible structures, for instance, in addition to modeling all causes of flood and the influence of local defenses. “It’s a landmark transaction — the first time in history that the U.S. Federal Government is sponsoring a catastrophe bond” John SEO Fermat capital Jillian Williams, chief underwriting officer at Leadenhall Capital Partners, notes that ILS is increasingly bundling together multiple perils in an effort to gain diversification. “Diversification is important for any investment strategy, as you are always trying to minimize the risk of losing large amounts in one go,” she says. “Cat bonds (144A’s) currently have defined perils, but collateralized reinsurance and private cat bonds can cover all perils. Complexities and flow of information to all parties will be a challenge for cat bonds to move from defined perils to UNL all perils. “Any new peril or structure in a cat bond will generate many questions, even if they don’t have a major impact on the potential losses,” she continues. “Investors will want to know why the issuers want to include these new perils and structures and how the associated risk is calculated. For UNL, all flood (not just sea surge) would be included in the cat bond, so the definition of the peril, its complexities, variables and its correlation to other perils will need to be evaluated and represented in the flood models used.” She thinks the potential to transfer more flood to the capital markets is there, but that the complexity of the peril are challenges that need to be overcome, particularly in the U.S. “Flood coverage is already starting to move into the capital markets, but there are many issues that need to be worked through before it can be moved to a 144A transaction in a UNL format for many territories,” says Williams. “Just one of the complexities is that flood risk may be covered by government pools. “To move flood perils from government pools to private insurers is like any evolution, it can take time, particularly if existing coverage is subsidized,” she adds. “For private insurers, the complexity is not just about flood modeling but also about ensuring risk-adequate pricing and navigating through government legislation.”

NIGEL ALLENMay 10, 2018
Capturing the Resilience
Capturing the Resilience
Capturing the Resilience Dividend
May 10, 2018

Incentivizing resilience efforts in vulnerable, low-income countries will require the ‘resilience dividend’ to be monetized and delivered upfront The role of the insurance industry and the wider risk management community is rapidly expanding beyond the scope of indemnifying risk. A growing recognition of shared responsibility is fostering a greater focus on helping reduce loss potential and support risk reduction, while simultaneously providing the post-event recovery funding that is part of the sector’s original remit. “There is now a concerted industrywide effort to better realize the resilience dividend,” believes Ben Brookes, managing director of capital and resilience solutions at RMS, “particularly in disaster-prone, low-income countries — creating that virtuous circle where resilience efforts are recognized in reduced premiums, with the resulting savings helping to fund further resilience efforts.” Acknowledging the Challenge In 2017, RMS conducted a study mapping the role of insurance in managing disaster losses in low- and low-middle-income countries on behalf of the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID). It found that the average annual economic loss across 77 countries directly attributable to natural disasters was US$29 billion. Further, simulations revealed a 10 percent probability that these countries could experience losses on the magnitude of US$47 billion in 2018, affecting 180 million people. Breaking these colossal figures down, RMS showed that of the potential US$47 billion hit, only 12 percent would likely be met by humanitarian aid with a further 5 percent covered by insurance. This leaves a bill of some US$39 billion to be picked up by some of the poorest countries in the world. The U.K. government has long recognized this challenge and to further the need in facilitating effective international collaboration across both public and private sectors to address a shortfall of this magnitude. In July 2017, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May launched the Centre for Global Disaster Protection. The London-based institution brings together partners including DFID, the World Bank, civil society and the private sector to achieve a shared goal of strengthening the resilience capabilities of developing countries to natural disasters and the impacts of climate change. The Centre aims to provide neutral advice and develop innovative financial tools, incorporating insurance-specific instruments, that will enable better pre-disaster planning and increase the financial resilience of vulnerable regions to natural disasters. Addressing the International Insurance Society shortly after the launch, Lord Bates, the U.K. Government Minister of State for International Development, said that the aim of the Centre was to combine data, research and science to “analyze risk and design systems that work well for the poorest people” and involve those vulnerable people in the dialogue that helps create them. “It is about innovation,” he added, “looking at new ways of working and building new collaborations across the finance and humanitarian communities, to design financial instruments that work for developing countries.” A Lack of Incentive There are, however, multiple barriers to creating an environment in which a resilient infrastructure can be developed. “Resilience comes at a cost,” says Irena Sekulska, engagement manager at Vivid Economics, “and delivers long-term benefits that are difficult to quantify. This makes the development of any form of resilient infrastructure extremely challenging, particularly in developing countries where natural disasters hit disproportionally harder as a percentage of GDP.” The potential scale of the undertaking is considerable, especially when one considers that the direct economic impact of a natural catastrophe in a vulnerable, low-income country can be multiples of its GDP. This was strikingly demonstrated by the economic losses dealt out by Hurricanes Irma and Harvey across the Caribbean and the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, a one-in-ten-year loss that wiped out 120 percent of the country’s GDP. Funding is, of course, a major issue, due to the lack of fiscal capacity in many of these regions. In addition, other existing projects may be deemed more urgent or deserving of funding measures to support disaster preparedness or mitigate potential impacts. Limited on-the-ground institutional and technical capacity to deliver on resilience objectives is also a hindering factor, while the lack of a functioning insurance sector in many territories is a further stumbling block. “Another issue you often face,” explains Charlotte Acton, director of capital and resilience solutions at RMS, “is the misalignment between political cycles and the long-term benefits of investment in resilience. The reason is that the benefits of that investment are only demonstrated during a disaster, which might only occur once every 10, 20 or even 100 years — or longer.” Another problem is that the success of any resilience strategy is largely unobservable. A storm surge hits, but the communities in its path are not flooded. The winds tear through a built-up area, but the buildings stand firm. “The challenge is that by attempting to capture resilience success you are effectively trying to predict, monitor and monetize an avoided loss,” explains Shalini Vajjhala, founder and CEO of re:focus, “and that is a very challenging thing to do.” A Tangible Benefit “The question,” states Acton, “is whether we can find a way to monetize some of the future benefit from building a more resilient infrastructure and realize it upfront, so that it can actually be used in part to finance the resilience project itself. “In theory, if you are insuring a school against hurricane-related damage, then your premiums should be lower if you have built in a more resilient manner. Catastrophe models are able to quantify these savings in expected future losses, and this can be used to inform pricing. But is there a way we can bring that premium saving forward, so it can support the funding of the resilient infrastructure that will create it?” It is also about making the resilience dividend tangible, converting it into a return that potential investors or funding bodies can grasp. “The resilience dividend looks a lot like energy efficiency,” explains Vajjhala, “where you make a change that creates a saving rather than requires a payment. The key is to find a way to define and capture that saving in a way where the value is clear and trusted. Then the resilience dividend becomes a meaningful financial concept — otherwise it’s too abstract.” The dividend must also be viewed in its broadest context, demonstrating its value not only at a financial level in the context of physical assets, but in a much wider societal context, believes Sekulska. “Viewing the resilience dividend through a narrow, physical-damage-focused lens misses the full picture. There are multiple benefits beyond this that must be recognized and monetized. The ability to stimulate innovation and drive growth; the economic boost through job creation to build the resilient infrastructure; the social and environmental benefits of more resilient communities. It is about the broader service the resilient infrastructure provides rather than simply the physical assets themselves.” Work is being done to link traditional modeled physical asset damage to broader macroeconomic effects, which will go some way to starting to tackle this issue. Future innovation may allow the resilience dividend to be harnessed in other creative ways, including the potential increase in land values arising from reduced risk exposure. The Innovation Lab It is in this context that the Centre for Global Disaster Protection, in partnership with Lloyd’s of London, launched the Innovation Lab. The first lab of its kind run by the Centre, held on January 31, 2018, provided an open forum to stimulate cross-specialty dialogue and catalyze innovative ideas on how financial instruments could incentivize the development of resilient infrastructure and encourage building back better after disasters. Co-sponsored by Lloyd’s and facilitated by re:focus, RMS and Vivid Economics, the Lab provided an environment in which experts from across the humanitarian, financial and insurance spectrum could come together to promote new thinking and stimulate innovation around this long-standing issue. “The ideas that emerged from the Lab combined multiple different instruments,” explains Sekulska, “because we realized that no single financial mechanism could effectively monetize the resilience dividend and bring it far enough upfront to sufficiently stimulate resilience efforts. Each potential solution also combined a funding component and a risk transfer component.” “The solutions generated by the participants ranged from the incremental to the radical,” adds Vajjhala. “They included interventions that could be undertaken relatively quickly to capture the resilience dividend and those that would require major structural changes and significant government intervention to set up the required entities or institutions to manage the proposed projects.” Trevor Maynard, head of innovation at Lloyd’s, concluded that the use of models was invaluable in exploring the value of resilience compared to the cost of disasters, adding “Lloyd’s is committed to reducing the insurance gap and we hope that risk transfer will become embedded in the development process going forward so that communities and their hard work on development can be protected against disasters.” Monetizing the Resilience Dividend: Proposed Solutions “Each proposed solution, to a greater or lesser extent, meets the requirements of the resilience brief,” says Acton. “They each encourage the development of resilient infrastructure, serve to monetize a portion of the resilience dividend, deliver the resilience dividend upfront and involve some form of risk transfer.” Yet, they each have limitations that must be addressed collectively. For example, initial model analysis by RMS suggests that the potential payback period for a RESCO-based solution could be 10 years or longer. Is this beyond an acceptable period for investors? Could the development impact bond be scaled-up sufficiently to tackle the financial scope of the challenge? Given the donor support requirement of the insurance-linked loan package, is this a viable long-term solution? Would the complex incentive structure and multiple stakeholders required by a resilience bond scuttle its development? Will insurance pricing fully recognize the investments in resilience that have been made, an assumption underlying each of these ideas? RMS, Vivid Economics and re:focus are working together with Lloyd’s and the Centre to further develop these ideas, adding more analytics to assess the cost-benefit of those considered to be the most viable in the near term, ahead of publication of a final report in June. “The purpose of the Lab,” explains Vajjhala, “is not to agree upon a single solution, but rather to put forward workable solutions to those individuals and institutions that took part in the dialogue and who will ultimately be responsible for its implementation should they choose to move the idea forward.” And as Sekulska makes clear, evolving these embryonic ideas into full-fledged, effective financial instruments will take significant effort and collective will on multiple fronts. “There will need to be concerted effort across the board to convert these innovative ideas into working solutions. This will require pricing it fully, having someone pioneer it and take it forward, putting together a consortium of stakeholders to implement it.”

Ben BrookesJuly 25, 2016
The next big one
The next big one
The Next Big One?
July 25, 2016

Rather than waiting for the next elusive hard market, successful (re)insurers are focusing on making informed underwriting decisions and taking well-calculated risks, according to Ben Brookes, managing director – capital and resilience solutions, RMS. A popular topic of conversation at the big industry gatherings is when the next “big one” will occur. What size and nature of loss could reverse the softening trend and see a return to hard market pricing? The influx of alternative capital into the reinsurance market over the past decade has transformed the traditional reinsurance cycle with no guarantee a market peak will follow the current trough. Insured catastrophe losses over the past few years have been significantly below average, particularly in comparison to major loss years such as 2005 and 2011. The majority of large-scale events during this time have resulted in a relatively low level of insurance claims due to the fact they have occurred in areas where insurance penetration is low. “THERE IS SIGNIFICANT DOUBT OVER WHETHER A U.S. HURRICANE LANDFALLING ON ITS OWN COULD TURN THE MARKET – PARTICULARLY BECAUSE U.S. HURRICANE IS ONE OF THE BEST-UNDERSTOOD AND WELL-MODELED PERILS, MAKING THIS A SCENARIO THE MARKET CAN MANAGE.” Recent frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes, typically a significant driver of insurance industry catastrophe losses, has been below average, with 2015’s record El Niño one factor behind the low number of tropical cyclones. These conditions have resulted in a protracted soft market, in addition to excess capacity and heightened competition within the reinsurance sector. There is significant doubt over whether a U.S. hurricane on its own could turn the market – particularly because U.S. hurricane is one of the best-understood and well-modeled perils, making this a scenario the market can manage. What we do know is that market-changing events are often surprise losses, revealing unknown accumulations lurking in reinsurance portfolios. Historical examples included Hurricane Katrina’s ability to overcome the defenses in New Orleans and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center. A surprise event is the one you don’t see coming and is the one most likely to change the market. Given the quickly evolving nature of emerging risks such as cyber and pandemic, in addition to more traditional perils, such a loss could arise from numerous sources. Increasing insurance penetration in emerging markets has increased the assets-at-risk of natural catastrophes and the potential for major losses from regions that have been traditionally regarded as “non-peak.” “IT THEREFORE APPEARS INCREASINGLY UNLIKELY THE INDUSTRY WILL AGAIN SEE A MARKET ADJUSTMENT ON THE SCALE THAT WAS LAST WITNESSED IN 2001 AND 2005 DUE TO THE INDUSTRY’S FUNDAMENTALLY ALTERED CAPITAL STRUCTURE.” Given the way in which the industry has changed and the ability of capital to move quickly into the industry post-event, even a major shock or series of shocks may not have the same impact on the reinsurance cycle that it did in the past. Insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund managers continue to line up capital ready to be deployed the minute there is any indication of price hardening. It therefore appears increasingly unlikely the industry will again see a market adjustment on the scale that was last witnessed in 2001 and 2005 due to the industry’s fundamentally altered capital structure. While this is a good thing in terms of the structural integrity of the market, it also means reinsurance companies are faced with the prospect that current soft market conditions will continue to prevail and are, in essence, the new normal. In such an environment, risk selection and risk-adequate pricing are all-important, and there is very little margin for error. Competition in the reinsurance space is now a race to broaden insurance coverage, searching for new business in new territories and risk classes, rather than a race to the bottom with reinsurers competing on price alone. Modeling, data and analytics offer a competitive advantage to those reinsurers that use them to make informed decisions and take informed risks. Underwriters are scrutinizing model output more than ever before, overlaying their own assumptions and risk tolerance and looking for unexpected correlations between books of business to avoid being disproportionately impacted by any one event, and avoiding the private catastrophe. The ability to customize and blend multiple models allows users to tailor the models to their own view of risk, and complement and build on the insights from sophisticated exposure and accumulation management techniques, with increasingly real-time views of portfolio risk. Driving value out of these model output-based decisions will be the main differentiator as reinsurers navigate and make sense of the new reinsurance environment. For instance, one such opportunity is the ability to understand the “spatial correlation” of European flood risk in order to gain a diversification benefit and make quick and strategic M&A decisions by analyzing exposure data in real time. In a market coming to terms with this “new normal” of lower margins, but serving an increasingly important role in creating a safer society through broader coverage, the importance of effective catastrophe risk quantification and management has never been greater.

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