Aon enhances modeling capabilities to tackle challenging peril

Re/insurance broker Aon has partnered with Athenium Analytics to enhance its modeling capabilities for severe convective storms (SCS), the costliest peril for the insurance industry in the US.

Aon said it is collaborating with Athenium to fill SCS data gaps that insurers need to accurately price, underwrite portfolios and purchase reinsurance as a means to rethink access to capital when navigating volatility from this peril.

The programme will leverage Athenium Analytics’ expertise in both natural and data sciences. It will present opportunities for improved underwriting and aggregation tools, as well as help insurers tackle the growing losses associated with this peril, including sub-perils - hail, straight-line winds and tornadoes.

Liz Henderson, senior managing director for Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions business, explained: “Insurers recognise that SCS is a challenging peril to understand as historical data that has traditionally been relied upon tends to be biased towards population centers, hence underrepresenting the hazard in rural or growing communities.

"In addition, fraudulent claims can lead to an inflation of losses, making it difficult to quantify vulnerability. With these challenges, current tools often underestimate the true cost of the SCS peril. Our collaboration with Athenium Analytics will enable insurers to make more informed business decisions when managing this risk.”

Siamak Daneshvaran, global head of research & development for Aon’s Impact Forecasting team, added: “The collaboration between our teams will build upon synergies across hazard, technology and data to boost insurers’ understanding of severe convective storms. The better the historical data, the more robust the stochastic event set will be to create realistic average annual loss and probability curves to support underwriting and reinsurance buying.”

Jordan Foley, president at Athenium Analytics, said: “Our team of meteorologists, data scientists and engineers are equipped to create solutions allowing carriers to more accuracy and comprehensively evaluate SCS risk. The innovative data aggregation and normalization techniques we utilize across a range of various SCS datasets and sources will generate more actionable hazard insights, which are key for insurers to better navigate and adapt to future SCS risk.”