AIR Worldwide Updates Its Catastrophe Risk Modeling Systems

January 1, 2011 / 4 min read

BOSTON, March 24, 2010 — Catastrophe risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) released updates to its CATRADER® and CLASIC/2TM catastrophe risk management systems. The Version 11.5 releases include a number of significant software enhancements that will enable insurers, reinsurers, and investors in insurance-linked securities (ILS) to streamline catastrophe risk analysis, portfolio management, and reporting.

“One of the most significant enhancements to CATRADER, the industry-standard application for analyzing reinsurance contracts and insurance-linked securities, is an improved portfolio management module that will enable risk managers and investors to assess their portfolio risk much more efficiently,” said Uday Virkud, P.E., executive vice president at AIR Worldwide. “Now, investors and reinsurers can more easily assess the impact of new investments or contracts on their existing portfolios to maximize return on investment.”

CATRADER Version 11.5 allows companies to manage multiple portfolios that have a variety of reinsurance contracts, ILS, sidecars, and private placements. Increased flexibility to review the marginal impact of a potential transaction in real time enables risk managers and investors to dynamically examine different risk management strategies.

The new CATRADER release also provides an improved approach for analyzing reinsurance contracts and insurance-linked securities whose terms span multiple years, allowing for better control of risk over time.

Version 11.5 of CATRADER includes enhanced reporting functionality. The additional reports support dynamic filtering by contract, peril, and region to allow users to quickly generate multiple views of their portfolio from a single analysis. For instance, users can view the risk profile of their entire portfolio before drilling down to a single region or group of regions. They can then further isolate the risk from a given peril or transaction. This enables risk managers and investors to perform “as-if” analyses in real time on any component of the portfolio. The reports can be customized by individual organizations to meet specific needs.

CATRADER’s ability to import company and contract data can now be streamlined using AIR Integration Solutions, which allow companies to seamlessly embed catastrophe modeling into their existing applications and workflows. Virkud added, “AIR Integration Solutions are highly customizable and are used by a growing number of companies to automate processes ranging from underwriting individual risks to analyzing entire portfolios based on their specific requirements. By reducing the need for staff to learn new software applications, AIR Integration Solutions enable companies to spend less time manipulating data and more time analyzing results.”

CLASIC/2, the application of choice for companies who need to accurately assess catastrophe risk down to the individual location level, has been enhanced in Version 11.5. The enhancement allows the importing and exporting of exposure data in the ACORD U.S. Property Binding Authority Standard (ACORD ER30001) when stored in a Microsoft® Excel file. AIR was the first catastrophe modeling firm to support the ACORD binding authority exposure data standard and continues to be a proponent of open data standards to enable the smooth transfer of catastrophe exposure data for risk analysis.

Additionally, Lloyd’s syndicates have reporting requirements for Lloyd’s® Realistic Disaster Scenarios (RDS). Each year, AIR and Lloyd’s identify specific simulated events that meet the criteria for the RDS. To help simplify and standardize the RDS reporting process, AIR has introduced a stand-alone RDS event set for both the CLASIC/2 and CATRADER 11.5 versions.

Other enhancements and workflow improvements available in CLASIC/2 Version 11.5 are as follows:

The AIR Earthquake Model for Japan, the AIR Earthquake Model for China, and the AIR Typhoon Model for China benefit from a streamlined catalog of simulated events that reduces model run time with minimal impact on modeled losses. Process times using the earthquake and typhoon models for China will further benefit from an approximately 50 percent reduction in the time needed to disaggregate province-level data for detailed analysis.
Company Loss Files (CLFs) and average annual loss (AAL) can be generated for each location through a single analysis.
Multiple peril-specific location policy terms can now be imported using AIR ImportExpressTM.

“Companies are constantly looking for more efficient ways to evaluate and manage their catastrophe risk,” continued Mr. Virkud. “We are committed to enhancing our catastrophe modeling systems to provide our clients with innovative new capabilities to support their risk management decisions.”

About AIR Worldwide
AIR Worldwide (AIR) is the scientific leader and most respected provider of risk modeling software and consulting services. AIR founded the catastrophe modeling industry in 1987 and today models the risk from natural catastrophes and terrorism in more than 50 countries. More than 400 insurance, reinsurance, financial, corporate, and government clients rely on AIR software and services for catastrophe risk management, insurance-linked securities, detailed site-specific wind and seismic engineering analyses, agricultural risk management, and property replacement-cost valuation. AIR is a member of the ISO family of companies and is headquartered in Boston with additional offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.air-worldwide.com.

Release: Immediate

Contact:
Kevin Long
AIR Worldwide
617-267-6645
rgrater@air-worldwide.com