Lloyds of London and the MIS team hosted an afternoon event in the Old Library on June 15th to discuss preparing for storm season 2022. We want to be prepared in the best possible way to deal with any upcoming catastrophic events and, more importantly, ensure our clients can provide their clients with the most satisfactory possible service.
We started the afternoon with some networking and refreshments before Forbes McKenzie, our CEO, presented a history of McKenzie Intelligence Services and GEO and the journey so far. He also shared insights as to how clients using GEO have directly benefited from catastrophe intelligence over the past 12 months, which led us nicely into a talk from Carey Bond, the Lloyd’s of London Head of Claims (Americas), to speak about how members of Lloyd’s of London using GEO are at a distinct advantage in responding to catastrophic events as we work our way through storm season.
MIS and Lloyd’s of London entered a partnership in August 2021. The announcement was made just before the landfall of Hurricane Ida, so Lloyd’s of London has been able to make full use of GEO and the multi-layered data it provides as they continue their industry-leading practices in the catastrophe space and leverage technology to ensure that their obligation to the market is met.
By using GEO, they can capture catastrophe-related information in a timely and more productive manner than before. From the moment there is an isolated flutter off the coast of Africa to the moment a campfire becomes a wildfire in California, the market has access to windspeeds, boundaries, pressures, exact locations, and directions through the use of satellites, drones, and other multi-source data collection methods. Using satellite imagery, drone footage, and ground verification, allows for more focused positioning of adjusters, planning for logistics, and real-time views of the ground conditions.
It’s clear that the strong partnership between Lloyd’s of London and MIS, in addition to the collaboration of the DCA community and the utilising of GEO, has made Hurricane Ida an excellent test case for success in catastrophe response planning and reporting and demonstrates how the implementation of the right technology, coupled with a solid catastrophe plan ensures clients can be effectively served in times of need when they need it most.
Our first two breakout sessions began in the late afternoon, with Stuart Ray, one of our Senior Intelligence Analysts, taking the podium to discuss all things imagery. We learned about the likely education and background of Intelligence Analysts as a starting point, and quite a few myths surrounding what they actually do were dispelled, prompting some laughter.
During his presentation, Stuart explained the various types of imagery we have access to through our partnerships with Nasa, Airbus, and Maxar, to name a few, before moving on to highlight our consulting offering, where we focused on two individual, real-life, complex cases of business interruption and reinsurance that we examined in-depth. The two instances illustrated how we help clients understand losses using imagery, expert analysis, and comparison, as well as improved intelligence gathering techniques to help deliver pinpoint timelines and irrefutable evidence on the ground, which look backwards in a way that traditional insurance adjusting cannot match.
“I just wanted to let you know that in the recent matter that you were involved with, the Arbitration panel have now issued their ruling and have found in favour of Reinsurers. This is a tremendous result for us, and thank you for your involvement.”
Head of Reinsurance Claims, Lloyd’s Syndicate
To complete our break-out sessions, our Product Team announced the new GEO updates and features they’ve been working on, which are now live. They also stressed the benefits of clients sharing their data with the MIS team in advance of events. Insurers working with us before a loss event by sharing risk information and setting permissions for claims decisions can enable a much more nuanced assessment of their loss footprint and help speed up the claims payment process, ease the extent of claims costs, and, most importantly, benefit their policyholders. Additionally, insurers can extract our data post-event and feed it back into their underwriting and pricing processes.
As a final contribution to our event, Dr David Banks of Kings College London, an international relations scholar specialising in diplomatic history and practice, wargaming, and conflict simulation, shared his views on how insurers, in particular, can apply wargaming lessons to catastrophe response.
We want to extend another huge thank you to Lloyd’s of London for hosting us and their contributions to the day, as well as our keynote speaker, Dr David Banks. For those that couldn’t make the event, please find the majority of presentations below, which are available for download.
>>> Dr David Banks – Wargaming the Future
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