TOKYO (18 February 2016) – Impact Forecasting, Aon Benfield’s catastrophe model development team, has licensed its loss calculation platform ELEMENTS to both MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings, Inc. and its group company InterRisk Research Institute & Consulting, Inc. Aon Benfield is the global reinsurance intermediary and capital advisor of Aon plc (NYSE:AON).

MS&AD Insurance Group is enhancing its risk quantification capability to identify accumulated risk and improve its risk management strategies.

Impact Forecasting’s ELEMENTS platform was chosen to house the models developed by InterRisk Research to better analyse non-modelled perils. The platform was selected by MS&AD Insurance Group as it enables the firm to develop and run its catastrophe models more efficiently due to its:

• Transparency for a better understanding of the model inputs and outputs
• Ability to easily use and customise models within the platform
• Mapping to enable users to visualise the hazard, exposure and losses without the need to create maps manually or use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software
• High speed loss calculation achieved by using multiple server cores and 64-bit technology to run analyses
• Visualisation and quantification of uncertainty within the model and how this can be mitigated with the use of more accurate data.

Chief Executive Officer of Aon Benfield Japan, Katsuya Tanimizu commented: “As Japanese insurers develop increasingly sophisticated catastrophe models, we are seeing the trend to find a robust platform on which to run them. Ever since Tohoku in 2011, regulatory and shareholder pressure means that these models need to evolve to incorporate new aspects such as governance systems and quality standards to better understand the potential risks.”                   

Yousuke Satoh, Deputy General Manager, Head of Natural Catastrophe Risk Management Team of MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings, Inc., commented: “Quantifying non-modelled catastrophe risks from our point of view is becoming more crucial since current models have not yet covered all of these risks. MS&AD Insurance Group is enhancing our capability to evaluate non-modelled risks, especially those which have high uncertainty, by using ELEMENTS to improve our sophisticated risk management strategies.”

Kei Horie, Manager, Senior Researcher, Head of Risk Assessment Section of InterRisk Research Institute & Consulting, Inc., commented: “We were impressed by the powerful and highly customisable functionality of ELEMENTS, in addition to its user-friendly interface. ELEMENTS can incorporate new hazard and vulnerability modules that reflect our viewpoint of risk while providing an efficient environment for our catastrophe modellers to utilise their expertise.”

More information on ELEMENTS can be accessed at http://bit.ly/if_elements    

ENDS

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