AIR integrates third-party catastrophe data & models into Touchstone

Catastrophe risk modelling company AIR Worldwide has announced that it is integrating risk models and data from a number of third-party suppliers within its Touchstone risk modelling software platform.

Due to widespread and successful adoption of Touchstone, AIR said that a large number of third-party risk modelling companies and catastrophe risk data suppliers have chosen to provide access to their services via the Touchstone platform. Third-party suppliers offering their data and models within AIR’s platform will include Ambiental, ERN, EuroTempest, IHS Inc., KatRisk, Met Office, PERILS, and SSBN.

AIR is seeking to turn Touchstone into a one-stop software platform for risk modelling and catastrophe data analysis, hence integrating services which are not part of their product range makes sense to make the platform more sticky for users.

With the addition of these new integrations Touchstone will become a one-stop platform for assessing and managing risk across a wide range of perils, including flood, terrorism, earthquake, tropical cyclone, and other perils.

“Touchstone was designed to be an open platform, allowing clients to import third-party hazard layers or run multiple alternative models on a single platform for a more complete view of risk,” commented Ming Lee, president and CEO of AIR Worldwide. “Because we have not adopted a ‘usage fee’ or ‘pay-per-click’ pricing model for Touchstone, availability of third-party models and hazard layers will encourage our clients to run more analyses, not fewer, to explore and compare alternative views and truly own their risk. Having those models and hazard layers available from within a single platform will also significantly improve workflow and productivity.”

“We are very pleased that AIR is enabling integration of our many flood hazard maps through its Touchstone platform,” added Guy Morrow, co-founder of KatRisk. “This will help deliver new sources of data to a much broader audience, which is particularly important for a complex peril such as flood. We hope that companies using our data through Touchstone will be able to achieve a much broader view of risk.”

“We applaud AIR for allowing our models and hazard data for Mexico and Latin America to run alongside its global suite of models in Touchstone,” said Eduardo Reinoso, CEO at ERN. “There are many operational benefits to providing models from multiple developers on a single platform, including significantly reduced data preparation and processing time, easier viewing, and comparison of multiple results.”

AIR is continuing to have conversations with other industry risk modelling and third-party data providers, so expect to see the range of models available in Touchstone expand further. It is also developing much closer relationships with other industry organisations and data providers, such as the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) and PERILS. AIR was a founding member of GEM and PERILS and AIR already allow their mutual clients to seamlessly integrate the PERILS Industry Exposure Database (IED) and event sets generated using this IED.

“We look forward to collaborating with other data and model providers as we continue to offer the most complete exposure and catastrophe management solution via Touchstone,” commented Dr. Milan Simic, senior vice president and managing director of international operations at AIR Worldwide. “Our approach — to empower companies to make decisions based on their free choice and specific needs, whether they are scientific, technical, actuarial or technology-based — is being met with enthusiasm by our clients.”

AIR Worldwide is a division of the Verisk Insurance Solutions group at Verisk Analytics. Yesterday we wrote that another Verisk Analytics unit, Property Claim Services (PCS) is integrating data from Verisk Climate (another unit) into its catastrophe bulletin reports.

Verisk appears to be making a concerted move to consolidate on its position in the risk modelling, catastrophe data and analytics market. It will be interesting to see what comes next as technology improvements in software, data analysis and cloud storage enable companies like Verisk to make significant leaps in the services they provide to reinsurance, insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market clients.