LONDON (6 July 2015) – Aon Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary and capital advisor of Aon plc (NYSE:AON), is calling upon the insurance industry to collaborate to innovate, in order to obtain the most useful risk management insights from catastrophe models.

With today’s launch of version 9.5 of ELEMENTS, Impact Forecasting’s loss calculation platform, the firm is highlighting how working with third parties can bring new opportunities. These include running third party models in ELEMENTS or using the platform to run models in various third party formats. Examples of putting this approach into practice include:

• Ambiental has made available its new Australia FloodCat™ probabilistic model via ELEMENTS. This enables insurers and reinsurers to quantify previously non-modelled flood risk in Australia in an established environment of ELEMENTS, minimising the need to learn and manage a new platform. 
• ELEMENTS 9.5 is able to run models in the Oasis pre-calculated format for hazard and vulnerability. By embracing the use of the Oasis format, Impact Forecasting is enabling model developers to deploy their models in a full production environment.

Adam Podlaha, Global Head of Impact Forecasting, commented: “We are committed to exploring ways to make the most of catastrophe models by working together as an industry. The open and customisable ELEMENTS platform helps to mitigate the need for insurers to install and learn new systems when looking to implement new models. We are pleased that we can play a part in this trend for greater collaboration.”

Justin Butler, Founder and CEO of Ambiental, added: “We chose ELEMENTS as it offers a highly customisable, easy-to-use, open and transparent platform which will helps users get up-and-running quickly. Their rigorous approach to back testing allows insurers to be confident in their underwriting and capital allocation decisions.”

In addition, the following new catastrophe models are available in the latest version of ELEMENTS:

• Updated US riverine flood
• Updated severe thunderstorm model, addition of RePlay for 10 years of US thunderstorm data
• New Arabian Peninsula earthquake
• Updated Greece and Cyprus earthquake
• Asia Realistic Disaster Scenarios for earthquake (Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines) and flood (China, Vietnam)

Learn more about industry collaborations at Impact Forecasting Revealed in Bermuda (7 July) and St Louis (21 July): http://bit.ly/ifr2015

ENDS

About Aon

Aon plc (NYSE:AON) is a leading global provider of risk management, insurance brokerage and reinsurance brokerage, and human resources solutions and outsourcing services. Through its more than 69,000 colleagues worldwide, Aon unites to empower results for clients in over 120 countries via innovative risk and people solutions. For further information on our capabilities and to learn how we empower results for clients, please visit: http://aon.mediaroom.com/

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