New ‘forward-looking’ casualty platform launched; Swiss Re first to license

InsurTech analytics company Praedicat has released a new liability insurance risk modelling platform, which it claims will allow insurers to use so-called forward-looking modelling.

Oortfolio, as the platform is called, allows quantitative analysis of insurer exposures to numerous emerging risks and runs deterministic casualty catastrophe scenarios.

Swiss Re has become the first company to license Oortfolio.

The platform estimates the performance of a portfolio, an underwriting strategy, or exposure of a particular company in a portfolio using a set of realistic disaster scenarios of mass litigation.

“Oortfolio moves away from the backward-looking paradigm of using historical claims data to understand risk, and brings together a full complement of modern data, technology and modelling to create forward-looking liability insurance operations,” said Robert Reville, CEO of Praedicat.

Andrea Scascighini, head of casualty accumulation solutions at Swiss Re, added: “Liability insurance covers companies across many industries, including those that create new technologies, innovations, products and practices that haven’t yet generated claims.”

“Managing these risks requires a new kind of data and modelling – forward-looking modelling – which Swiss Re is bringing to the market both through its own models and through partnerships with independent modellers like Praedicat.”

In a statement, Praedicat said: “In the last thirty years, catastrophe modelling has become part of the fabric of property insurance, where modelling the risk of property damage from natural catastrophes is expected by regulators and rating agencies.”

“The adoption of these models has reduced insurer insolvencies from natural catastrophes. It has led to significant market growth as well as the entry of new sources of capital, such as from hedge funds, to the property insurance market.”

Reville added: “We call it the ‘golden age of casualty’. Casualty has been the neglected sibling of property for thirty years, but new technologies from the field of data science, combined with Praedicat’s innovative modelling, have made it possible for casualty to have its turn. The golden age is dawning. We are proud to deliver this capability to the market.”