The Risks of Hazard

One of the story lines emerging from this year’s Rendez-vous de septembre in Monte Carlo was the continued relevance of P & C insurance and reinsurance. At first, it sounds a bit overdramatic, but there is something to it.

The continued relevance of the P & C industry was first questioned in 2012 by XL Group’s CEO Mike McGavick in an Insurance Journal article. Many of his points were centered on the relationship of insurers and reinsurers with other global industries, including their access to capital. The one point from this three-year old article that resonated for me is this:

As another example McGavick noted that following the floods in Thailand the price of computer chips rose by 10 percent. But the P & C industry’s response hasn’t been to offer solutions. It’s mainly been to impose sub-limits or to exclude it entirely. [McGavick] warned: “We cannot exclude our way to prosperity, and we cannot sub-limit our way to relevance.”

From a P & C executive, a CEO no less, those are fighting words, a rallying cry. Unfortunately, Mr. McGavick was viewed more as a Cassandra (to use IJ’s description) than a Henry IV.

The annual conference for the National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices (NAPSLO) was last week in San Diego, and Intermap’s Catherine Stinson was there. It was our first trip to NAPSLO, and it was exciting to hear from Catherine that the concerns we address with location-based analytics for underwriting are concerns of conference attendees. She caught up with several attendees, in what was a very busy couple days for all. In fact, it sounds like intense business discussions went late into the night for some.

The Associated Press recently ran a story on new research that tries to ascertain the return period (or annual likelihood) of the 2013 Colorado floods. Here is a reminder from the Denver Post of what the flood was like; since it was over two years ago (it seems like yesterday!).

As any decent summary should, let’s start with the conclusion of the research: “…the best way to characterize this storm is a very unusually widespread 100-year event with some small pockets of a 500-year event thrown in there.”

A very unusually widespread event? A 100-year event, except where it was a 500-year event?

Recently I’ve been researching where hurricanes have historically made landfall in the southeastern United States, and I have found little nuggets of wisdom that help drive underwriting in Florida. The variability of the frequency of hurricane strikes along the coast is surprising. Some places get nailed a lot, and some rarely get hit.