McKenzie Intelligence Services hosted a lunchtime event at the Old Library in Lloyd’s of London on the 16th of August to discuss trends and expectations for this year’s Storm Season. Insurers were welcomed from across the market to share insights and hear from our highly anticipated speaker, Professor Ralf Toumi of Imperial College London.
The event began at noon with lunch and refreshments being served as attendees rounded up to meet and network with their industry peers. This was followed by MIS Head of Sales & Marketing, Daniel Grimwood-Bird officially kicking off by welcoming all attendees and providing a brief overview of MIS’ core offerings: the Global Events Observer (GEO) and the five pillars of Consulting.
Rich Woodhams, Property Claims Manager from Dale Underwriting, took the stage to share his expectations for the upcoming storm season and how Dale’s partnership with MIS is a key component to his team’s preparedness for event response. He then introduced Forbes McKenzie, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of MIS, who further elaborated on the services we offer and proudly shared the team’s successes from the past few years, including our expansion from 7 to 28 full-time employees since 2021 and the coverage of 55 catastrophes in 2022 alone.
We were delighted to have Professor Ralf Toumi, who is also Co-Director of the Grantham Institute, take the stage to shed light on what exactly is happening to our climate and how it is directly impacting the formation and trajectory of hurricanes. His in-depth analysis of trends from past storm seasons coupled with the effects of El Niño and rising sea temperatures revealed some eye-opening statistics. Though it is impossible to make accurate predictions about the severity of storms to come, it is clear that weather patterns are generally becoming more extreme. Insurers, as well as the general population, should expect more tropical storms, hurricanes, floods, wildfires and so on.
For a recording of Toumi’s presentation, please reach out to your MIS representative or email [email protected]
The next and final session saw Rosina Smith, Chief Product Officer at MIS, unveil the latest features available on GEO designed to improve insurers’ event response efforts. Using the intelligence MIS derived from the recent Hawaii wildfires, she was able to showcase the detail in which GEO goes to provide insurers information on what exactly was destroyed or damaged, and how – the how being crucial in an instance such as a wildfire. GEO now has the capability to differentiate physical damage caused by the primary peril (in this case, fire) and any underlying damage caused by secondary perils (ie. smoke, water supply contamination, etc.) GEO’s application of multi-peril assessment will significantly improve insurers’ understanding of secondary perils leading to primary level losses.
To see multi-peril in action, request a demo on GEO here.
Lastly, and with utmost anticipation, Smith announced CAT360, MIS’ latest initiative to introduce ground-level imagery on GEO in additional to the already available space and aerial imagery. As we trial ground-level imagery, we look forward to hearing from our beta users as to whether this new perspective is useful to their event response efforts. Read more on CAT360.
We want to extend a thank you to all of our speakers as well as to those who attended. For further questions or to see where else you can connect with us, please reach out to Daniel Grimwood-Bird.
