Extreme events and reinsurance – Richard Murnane
The parts of the insurance and reinsurance industry involved in property
catastrophe risk actively follow advances in our knowledge of extreme events.
For this presentation I will focus on meteorological extremes related to climate
and weather and omit discussion related to geologic extremes (e.g.,
earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis) man-made extremes (e.g., terrorist
attacks and industrial accidents). The topics covered will include: a brief
description of the property catastrophe risk (re)insurance business, a discussion
of which hazards are of most interest and why, a summary of the importance of
real-time forecasts relative to probabilities derived from historical records, and an
overview of how (re)insurers (and regulators) account for climate change and
climate variability and the impact on their business.