CRESTA launches its global catastrophe industry loss index – CLIX

The CRESTA organisation has now launched its new global catastrophe industry loss index, which it has named CLIX, promising to cover all natural catastrophe industry loss events around the globe that cost insurance and reinsurance interests more than $1 billion.

The CRESTA Industry Loss Index, or CLIX, will provide benchmark information on catastrophe loss events around the world, using information sourced via multiple avenues.

The organisation promises a “comprehensive and systematic collection of public and non-public information from insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries, insurance associations, reporting agencies, and other sources.”

Weightings and adjustments may be applied to each individual source to determine the CLIX industry loss for any natural catastrophe event, with the data analysed by a team of professionals.

It seems likely this is designed more as a robust database of reliable historical and go-forwards information on insurance and reinsurance market losses from natural catastrophe events, than an index to be used for risk transfer purposes, given the multiple data sources it will utilise.

However, given the industry has tended to utilise unofficial industry loss data providers for risk transfer trigger inputs in the past, the CLIX data is at least a more formal source than some other trigger inputs that have been seen for industry loss transactions in the past.

Luzi Hitz, a Member of CRESTA’s CLIX Team, commented on the launch, “We are proud of what CRESTA has achieved with CLIX. Reliable industry loss data are key for understanding Cat risk and provide a basic but fundamentally important benchmark for Cat risk modelling. Since the foundation of CRESTA in 1977, the goal has been to help the global insurance industry manage natural catastrophe risk more effectively. CLIX aligns perfectly with this enduring goal and we look forward to adding even more value to CRESTA in the future.”

Matthias Saenger, Technical Manager of CLIX, added, “The insurance industry is fully aware of the challenges of compiling comprehensive and reliable Nat Cat industry loss data. Available information is often incomplete, outdated and in an unstructured format, while securing the data is time consuming and frustrating. CLIX aims to address this data shortfall by providing clean industry loss information in a well-structured format, helping underwriters and Cat researchers save both time and effort, and allowing them to focus on data analysis rather than data cleansing.”

Currently, the CLIX database of industry losses includes 144 major natural catastrophe events, 90 of which exceeded the reporting threshold.

They account for more than USD 260bn in insurance and reinsurance industry losses in aggregate and each event has a detailed description, as well as structured data on fatalities, number of claims, and other relevant information where available.

Industry losses tracked by CLIX will be updated quarterly up to a maximum of three years after the catastrophe event, unless an event loss is declared final by CRESTA at an earlier stage.

CRESTA was established by the insurance and reinsurance industry in 1977 as an independent body for the technical management of natural catastrophe insurance.