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NIGEL ALLENSeptember 05, 2018
Making it clear
Making it clear
Making it Clear
September 05, 2018

Pete Dailey of RMS explains why model transparency is critical to client confidence View of Hurricane Harvey from space In the aftermath of Hurricances Harvey, Irma and Maria (HIM), there was much comment on the disparity among the loss estimates produced by model vendors. Concerns have been raised about significant outlier results released by some modelers. “It’s no surprise,” explains Dr. Pete Dailey, vice president at RMS, “that vendors who approach the modeling differently will generate different estimates. But rather than pushing back against this, we feel it’s critical to acknowledge and understand these differences. “At RMS, we develop probabilistic models that operate across the full model space and deliver that insight to our clients. Uncertainty is inherent within the modeling process for any natural hazard, so we can’t rely solely on past events, but rather simulate the full range of plausible future events.” There are multiple components that contribute to differences in loss estimates, including the scientific approaches and technologies used and the granularity of the exposure data. “Increased demand for more immediate data is encouraging modelers to push the envelope” “As modelers, we must be fully transparent in our loss-estimation approach,” he states. “All apply scientific and engineering knowledge to detailed exposure data sets to generate the best possible estimates given the skill of the model. Yet the models always provide a range of opinion when events happen, and sometimes that is wider than expected. Clients must know exactly what steps we take, what data we rely upon, and how we apply the models to produce our estimates as events unfold. Only then can stakeholders conduct the due diligence to effectively understand the reasons for the differences and make important financial decisions accordingly.” Outlier estimates must also be scrutinized in greater detail. “There were some outlier results during HIM, and particularly for Hurricane Maria. The onus is on the individual modeler to acknowledge the disparity and be fully transparent about the factors that contributed to it. And most importantly, how such disparity is being addressed going forward,” says Dailey. “A ‘big miss’ in a modeled loss estimate generates market disruption, and without clear explanation this impacts the credibility of all catastrophe models. RMS models performed quite well for Maria. One reason for this was our detailed local knowledge of the building stock and engineering practices in Puerto Rico. We’ve built strong relationships over the years and made multiple visits to the island, and the payoff for us and our client comes when events like Maria happen.” As client demand for real-time and pre-event estimates grows, the data challenge placed on modelers is increasing. “Demand for more immediate data is encouraging modelers like RMS to push the scientific envelope,” explains Dailey, “as it should. However, we need to ensure all modelers acknowledge, and to the degree possible quantify, the difficulties inherent in real-time loss estimation — especially since it’s often not possible to get eyes on the ground for days or weeks after a major catastrophe.” Much has been said about the need for modelers to revise initial estimates months after an event occurs. Dailey acknowledges that while RMS sometimes updates its estimates, during HIM the strength of early estimates was clear. “In the months following HIM, we didn’t need to significantly revise our initial loss figures even though they were produced when uncertainty levels were at their peak as the storms unfolded in real time,” he states. “The estimates for all three storms were sufficiently robust in the immediate aftermath to stand the test of time. While no one knows what the next event will bring, we’re confident our models and, more importantly, our transparent approach to explaining our estimates will continue to build client confidence.”

Helen YatesMay 11, 2018
Assigning a Return Period
Assigning a Return Period
Assigning a Return Period to 2017
May 11, 2018

Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria (HIM) tore through the Caribbean and U.S. in 2017, resulting in insured losses over US$80 billion. Twelve years after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma (KRW), EXPOSURE asks if the (re)insurance industry was better prepared for its next ‘terrible trio’ and what lessons can be learned  In one sense, 2017 was a typical loss year for the insurance industry in that the majority of losses stemmed from the “peak zone” of U.S. hurricanes. However, not since the 2004-05 season had the U.S. witnessed so many landfalling hurricanes. It was the second most costly hurricane season on record for the (re)insurance industry, when losses in 2005 are adjusted for inflation. According to Aon Benfield, HIM caused total losses over US$220 billion and insured losses over US$80 billion — huge sums in the context of global catastrophe losses for the year of US$344 billion and insured losses of US$134 billion. Overall, weather-related catastrophe losses exceeded 0.4 percent of global GDP in 2017 (based on data from Aon Benfield, Munich Re and the World Bank), the second highest figure since 1990. In that period, only 2005 saw a higher relative catastrophe loss at around 0.5 percent of GDP. But, it seems, (re)insurers were much better prepared to absorb major losses this time around. Much has changed in the 12 years since Hurricane Katrina breached the levees in New Orleans. Catastrophe modeling as a profession has evolved into exposure management, models and underlying data have improved and there is a much greater appreciation of model uncertainty and assumptions, explains Alan Godfrey, head of exposure management at Asta. “Even post-2005 people would still see an event occurring, go to the models and pull out a single event ID … then tell all and sundry this is what we’re going to lose. And that’s an enormous misinterpretation of how the models are supposed to be used. In 2017, people demonstrated a much greater maturity and used the models to advise their own loss estimates, and not the other way around.” It also helped that the industry was extremely well-capitalized moving into 2017. After a decade of operating through a low interest rate and increasingly competitive environment, (re)insurers had taken a highly disciplined approach to capital management. Gone are the days where a major event sparked a series of run-offs. While some (re)insurers have reported higher losses than others, all have emerged intact. “In 2017 the industry has performed incredibly well from an operational point of view,” says Godfrey. “There have obviously been challenges from large losses and recovering capital, but those are almost outside of exposure management.” According to Aon Benfield, global reinsurance capacity grew by 80 percent between 1990 and 2017 (to US$605 billion), against global GDP growth of around 24 percent. The influx of capacity from the capital markets into U.S. property catastrophe reinsurance has also brought about change and innovation, offering new instruments such as catastrophe bonds for transferring extreme risks. Harvey broke all U.S. records for tropical cyclone-driven rainfall with observed cumulative rainfall of 51 inches Much of this growth in non-traditional capacity has been facilitated by better data and more sophisticated analytics, along with a healthy appetite for insurance risk from pension funds and other institutional investors. For insurance-linked securities (ILS), the 2017 North Atlantic hurricane season, Mexico’s earthquakes and California’s wildfires were their first big test. “Some thought that once we had a significant year that capital would leave the market,” says John Huff, president and chief executive of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurance (ABIR). “And we didn’t see that. “In January 2018 we saw that capital being reloaded,” he continues. “There is abundant capital in all parts of the reinsurance market. Deploying that capital with a reasonable rate of return is, of course, the objective.” Huff thinks the industry performed extremely well in 2017 in spite of the severity of the losses and a few surprises. “I’ve even heard of reinsurers that were ready with claim payments on lower layers before the storm even hit. The modeling and ability to track the weather is getting more sophisticated. We saw some shifting of the storms — Irma was the best example — but reinsurers were tracking that in real time in order to be able to respond.” The Buffalo Bayou River floods a park in Houston after the arrival of Hurricane Harvey How Harvey Inundated Houston One lesson the industry has learned over three decades of modeling is that models are approximations of reality. Each event has its own unique characteristics, some of which fall outside of what is anticipated by the models. The widespread inland flooding that occurred after Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas coastline is an important illustration of this, explains Huff. Even so, he adds, it continued a theme, with flood losses being a major driver of U.S. catastrophe claims for several years now. “What we’re seeing is flood events becoming the No. 1 natural disaster in the U.S. for people who never thought they were at risk of flood.” Harvey broke all U.S. records for tropical cyclone-driven rainfall with observed cumulative rainfall of 51 inches (129 centimeters). The extreme rainfall generated by Harvey and the unprecedented inland flooding across southeastern Texas and parts of southern Louisiana was unusual. However, nobody was overly surprised by the fact that losses from Harvey were largely driven by water versus wind. Prior events with significant storm surge-induced flooding, including Hurricane Katrina and 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, had helped to prepare (re)insurers, exposure managers and modelers for this eventuality. “The events themselves were very large but they were well within uncertainty ranges and not disproportionate to expectations,” says Godfrey. “Harvey is a new data point — and we don’t have that many — so the scientists will look at it and know that any new data point will lead to tweaks,” he continues. “If anything, it will make people spend a bit more time on their calibration for the non-modeled elements of hurricane losses, and some may conclude that big changes are needed to their own adjustments.” But, he adds: “Nobody is surprised by the fact that flooding post-hurricane causes loss. We know that now. It’s more a case of tweaking and calibrating, which we will be doing for the rest of our lives.” Flood Modeling Hurricane Harvey also underscored the importance of the investment in sophisticated, probabilistic flood models. RMS ran its U.S. Inland Flood HD Model in real time to estimate expected flood losses. “When Hurricane Harvey happened, we had already simulated losses of that magnitude in our flood model, even before the event occurred,” says Dr. Pete Dailey, vice president of product management and responsible for U.S. flood modeling at RMS. “The value of the model is to be able to anticipate extreme tail events well before they occur, so that insurance companies can be prepared in advance for the kind of risk they’re taking on and what potential claims volume they may have after a major event,” he adds. Does this mean that a US$100 billion-plus loss year like 2017 is now a 1-in-6-year event? Harvey has already offered a wealth of new data that will be fed into the flood model. The emergency shutdown of the Houston metropolitan area prevented RMS meteorologists and engineers from accessing the scene in the immediate aftermath, explains Dailey. However, once on the ground they gathered as much information as they could, observing and recording what had actually happened to affected properties. “We go to individual properties to assess the damage visually, record the latitude and longitude of the property, the street address, the construction, occupancy and the number of stories,” he says. “We will also make an estimate of the age of the property. Those basic parameters allow us to go back and take a look at what the model would have predicted in terms of damage and loss, as compared to what we observed.” The fact that insured losses emanating from the flooding were only a fraction of the total economic losses is an inevitable discussion point. The majority of claims paid were for commercial properties, with residential properties falling under the remit of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Many residential homes were uninsured, however, explains ABIR’s Huff. “The NFIP covers just the smallest amount of people — there are only five million policies — and yet you see a substantial event like Harvey which is largely uninsured because (re)insurance companies only cover commercial flood in the U.S.,” he says. “After Harvey you’ll see a realization that the private market is very well-equipped to get back into the private flood business, and there’s a national dialogue going on now.” Is 2017 the New Normal? One question being asked in the aftermath of the 2017 hurricane season is: What is the return period for a loss year like 2017? RMS estimates that, in terms of U.S. and Caribbean industry insured wind, storm surge and flood losses, the 2017 hurricane season corresponds to a return period between 15 and 30 years. However, losses on the scale of 2017 occur more frequently when considering global perils. Adjusted for inflation, it is seven years since the industry paid out a similar level of catastrophe claims — US$110 billion on the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Thai floods and New Zealand earthquake in 2011. Six years prior to that, KRW cost the industry in excess of US$75 billion (well over US$100 billion in today’s money). So, does this mean that a US$100 billion-plus (or equivalent in inflation-adjusted terms) loss year like 2017 is now a one-in-six-year event? As wealth and insurance penetration grows in developing parts of the world, will we begin to see more loss years like 2011, where catastrophe claims are not necessarily driven by the U.S. or Japan peak zones? “Increased insurance penetration does mean that on the whole losses will increase, but hopefully this is proportional to the premiums and capital that we are getting in,” says Asta’s Godfray. “The important thing is understanding correlations and how diversification actually works and making sure that is applied within business models. “In the past, people were able to get away with focusing on the world in a relatively binary fashion,” he continues. “The more people move toward diversified books of business, which is excellent for efficient use of capital, the more important it becomes to understand the correlations between different regions.” “You could imagine in the future, a (re)insurer making a mistake with a very sophisticated set of catastrophe and actuarial models,” he adds. “They may perfectly take into account all of the non-modeled elements but get the correlations between them all wrong, ending up with another year like 2011 where the losses across the globe are evenly split, affecting them far more than their models had predicted.” As macro trends including population growth, increasing wealth, climate change and urbanization influence likely losses from natural catastrophes, could this mean a shorter return period for years like last year, where industry losses exceeded US$134 billion? “When we look at the average value of properties along the U.S. coastline — the Gulf Coast and East Coast — there’s a noticeable trend of increasing value at risk,” says Dailey. “That is because people are building in places that are at risk of wind damage from hurricanes and coastal flooding. And these properties are of a higher value because they are more complex, have a larger square footage and have more stories. Which all leads to a higher total insured value. “The second trend that we see would be from climate change whereby the storms that produce damage along the coastline may be increasing in frequency and intensity,” he continues. “That’s a more difficult question to get a handle on but there’s a building consensus that while the frequency of hurricane landfalls may not necessarily be increasing, those that do make landfall are increasing in intensity.” Lloyd’s chief executive Inga Beale has stated her concerns about the impact of climate change, following the market’s £4.5 billion catastrophe claims bill for 2017. “That’s a significant number, more than double 2016; we’re seeing the impact of climate change to a certain extent, particularly on these weather losses, with the rising sea level that impacts and increases the amount of loss,” she said in an interview with Bloomberg. While a warming climate is expected to have significant implications for the level of losses arising from storms and other severe weather events, it is not yet clear exactly how this will manifest, according to Tom Sabbatelli, senior product manager at RMS. “We know the waters have risen several centimeters in the last couple of decades and we can use catastrophe models to quantify what sort of impact that has on coastal flooding, but it’s also unclear what that necessarily means for tropical cyclone strength. “The oceans may be warming, but there’s still an ongoing debate about how that translates into cyclone intensity, and that’s been going on for a long time,” he continues. “The reason for that is we just don’t know until we have the benefit of hindsight. We haven’t had a number of major hurricanes in the last few years, so does that mean that the current climate is quiet in the Atlantic? Is 2017 an anomaly or are we going back to more regular severe activity? It’s not until you’re ten or 20 years down the line and you look back that you know for sure.”

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.”

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