RMS Upgrades Hawaii Hurricane Model for Insurance Market

Risk Management Solutions (RMS), industry leader in the area of natural hazard risk modeling, announced the latest release of its RMS™ Hawaii Hurricane model.

The model upgrade offers significantly improved risk assessment capabilities to insurers re-entering the Hawaiian market for hurricane coverage.

The insured risk from hurricanes in Hawaii was highlighted by losses of $137 million from Hurricane Iwa in 1982 and $1.6 billion from Hurricane Iniki in 1992. Following Iniki, many insurers withdrew hurricane coverage from policyholders, and the Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund (HHRF) was subsequently established in 1993 to combat this crisis. However, since 1997 insurers have begun to re-enter the market, and no new business has been written by the HHRF since December 1, 2000.

Dr. Robert Muir-Wood, managing director of global risk modeling at RMS, stated that hurricane risk in Hawaii is essentially uncorrelated with catastrophe risk in other parts of the U.S. and in other regions worldwide. He added that the withdrawal of the HHRF creates an opportunity for insurers and reinsurers to diversify their catastrophe risk portfolio by writing more business in Hawaii, and the new upgraded model provides the risk assessment tools needed to underwrite and manage this business on a regional or global basis.

This latest release offers significantly improved risk assessment capabilities, including:

— a new stochastic database of over 2,500 representative hurricane events that can impact Hawaii

— an enhanced analytical capability for assessing the risk from hurricanes that make landfall on more than one island

— windfield modeling that incorporates the effect of terrain

— a more detailed representation of building vulnerability including construction classes unique to Hawaii.

The RMS Hawaii Hurricane model functions as part of the RMS U.S. Hurricane model. It is available for use with RiskLink® v4.2, RMS’ market-leading catastrophe modeling software application, used by primary insurers, brokers, and reinsurers worldwide. The model will also be available with the next release of RiskBrowser™, RMS’ underwriting system for personal and commercial property insurers and property facultative reinsurers.

RMS will hold a seminar on Sept. 13, 2001, in Honolulu to introduce the model. The seminar will provide a technical overview of RMS modeling parameters that are unique to Hawaii, and examples of how models can be used for exposure management. For more information about the Honolulu seminar, please visit www.rms.com.