BOSTON, Sept. 15, 2014 — Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide today announced that more than 90 companies across the insurance industry have implemented its catastrophe modeling software platform, Touchstone®, to help manage their catastrophe risk. Touchstone was first introduced in January 2013, and Version 2.0 of the software was released in July 2014. Touchstone has gained wide acceptance across the global marketplace by some of the largest insurers, reinsurers, asset managers, and intermediaries, including China Re P&C, Endurance, Everest Re, Fermat, Korean Re, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, and XL Re Ltd. AIR is a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) business.
“Touchstone is helping us execute on our core principles, including disciplined underwriting, careful management of exposures and accumulations, and the deeper analytics required for effective catastrophe risk management,” said Erick Davidson, cohead of catastrophe modeling at Everest Re. “Within days of deploying Touchstone, we were seeing considerable benefits, allowing us to run more analyses in significantly less time. We also greatly appreciate the flexibility to deploy Touchstone in the manner best suited for our specific needs.”
“We’re pleased with the functionality and ease of use of Touchstone, which allows us to run much more sophisticated and complex analyses,” said Sen Chen, deputy general manager and chief actuary, China Re P&C. “Touchstone’s intuitive metrics and dynamic dashboard enable us to better understand risk and communicate it to our various stakeholders. We’re equally impressed with AIR’s continued presence and focus on the evolving insurance market in China and on providing innovative solutions for this region.”
Touchstone allows users to gain a deeper understanding of their exposures and enterprisewide loss potential, develop insight into the drivers of uncertainty, generate information on demand to help make the right business decisions, and communicate the risk in clear language to stakeholders. Touchstone features dedicated modules for assessing and improving data quality, understanding location-level hazard, performing geospatial analytics for both modeled and nonmodeled countries using advanced GIS and mapping techniques (including flood hazard maps), and performing detailed loss analyses at run times far faster than previously possible. Touchstone is deployable in a variety of manners in order to satisfy the needs of clients — on premises, in the cloud, or fully integrated with their own business workflow systems.
Version 2.0 introduced the ability to account for both catastrophe and noncatastrophe risk (for example, fire and theft) in a single platform, providing a more comprehensive view of risk. Touchstone 2.0 also features a new “underwriting mode” to streamline the account underwriting process and new functionality that enables companies to better adjust model output to reflect their own view of risk.
“While we’ve invested and will continue to invest in Touchstone, we’re just at the start of a multiyear effort that will that make Touchstone the cornerstone of our clients’ business analytics,” said Bill Churney, COO, AIR Worldwide. “We’ll continue to build Touchstone to offer even more flexibility, a broader range of analytics, and seamless integration of catastrophe modeling with the broader risk management landscape.”
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 90 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, and agricultural risk management. AIR, a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) business, is headquartered in Boston with additional offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.air-worldwide.com.
Contact:
Kevin Long
AIR Worldwide
617-267-6645
klong@air-worldwide.com