MIS hosted our third annual Storm Season Event in the Hopper Room at Lloyd’s of London on Wednesday July 10th to discuss expectations for the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season and share how we are more prepared than ever to respond.
Attendees were welcomed from across the insurance market to share their insights, ask key questions to the panel and hear from our highly anticipated keynote speaker, Tomasz Schafernaker, experienced meteorologist and the BBC's flagship weather presenter.
The event kicked off at 11:30am with a word of welcome from Lloyd's Market Association Claims Director Janine Powell, before MIS Founder/CEO Forbes McKenzie gave an introductory speech, providing attendees with an overview of what was to come.
Following this, our keynote speaker, Tomasz Schafernaker, took the stage and addressed attendees with a wide-ranging talk. Upon sharing the journey of his vast experience and background, Tomasz highlighted some of the reasons for the widespread active forecasts for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, such as record sea surface temperatures in the Main Development Region and the transition to La Niña conditions in the Pacific.
Tomasz also demonstrated how the typical behaviour of hurricanes explains why the same locations tend to be impacted, as well as exploring some of the aspects which can cause hurricanes to become much more powerful, like low vertical wind shear and heavy moisture in the atmosphere. With Hurricane Beryl already shattering early season records, Tomasz showed attendees why this may just be the start of an exceptionally busy year.
We were also joined by James Smith, VP Global Analytics & Advisory at Guy Carpenter, who shared how GEO is a trusted tool within their wider geospatial workflow and how the intelligence provided is an integral part of their event response infrastructure.
Through partnering with MIS, James detailed how our data and intelligence helps Guy Carpenter to get adjusters sent out quickly and stay prepared for incoming claims. He explained how when an event happens, the data is secured from MIS, processed, linked to any of their relevant exposures and personalised email summaries are sent out to affected policyholders within minutes.
MIS COO Will Bonner followed James by providing attendees with a recap of all the events that MIS has covered on GEO since 2023's Storm Season event, which included 10 floods, 9 hail events, 8 tornadoes, 6 wildfires, 6 hurricanes, 3 earthquakes and 2 conflicts.
Will showed how MIS will support insurers this hurricane season with new GEO features like Policy Insights and AI-driven Building-Level damage assessments, as well as giving attendees an exciting preview of what's to come from the MIS team in terms of product updates in the near future.
To close out the event, Tomasz, James and Will got together on stage to take part in a panel discussion, which was moderated by InsTech CEO Matthew Grant.
This discussion gave attendees the chance to pose any burning questions they had to our speakers before the event came to an end, where there were some insightful answers and conversations taking place as a result.
With the speaking sessions coming to a close at 1:30pm, we couldn't let attendees leave without a bite to eat first!
We followed the talks with some lunch for everyone, where attendees, speakers and the MIS team all immersed themselves in some good conversation and good food as we brought the curtain down on another brilliant event.
Thank you to all our speakers, our partners at the LMA, the Lloyd's Lab, and everyone who attended!
For more information on the event, or how MIS can support you through the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, please get in touch.
