PERILS expands Australian coverage to include motor lines

Industry backed catastrophe loss data aggregator and estimator, PERILS AG, has announced the extension of its line of business reporting to include Australian motor for both personal and commercial lines.

Under its new offering, PERILS will make available market-wide motor sums insured exposed to earthquake, flood, tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, hailstorms, and bushfires in Australia through its database.

The company notes that these perils are the same as currently covered for the property line of business. The catastrophe loss data aggregator and estimator will provide event loss data for any events above a market loss of AUD 500 million (roughly USD 309 million) as a result of the above perils, for property and motor market losses combined.

Australian motor for personal and commercial lines will be included as part of the company’s Industry Exposure Update set to be released in April of this year.

Commenting on the expanded coverage, PERILS’ Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Luzi Hitz, said: “In addition to Canada, Australia will be the next market for which PERILS provides motor exposure and loss reporting. We are particularly grateful for the support we have received from the primary insurance industry in Australia to add motor going forward as without this it would not be possible.

“We believe it is yet another enhancement to our offering to fulfill our mission to increase data availability and transparency in the field of natural catastrophe insurance and to also enhance the availability of capacity into this important market.”

PERILS explains that as well as collecting property sums insured, it will also include motor sums insured and motor event loss data from primary insurance companies in Australia per postcode (high-resolution CRESTA Zones).

Once the data has been collected, PERILS produces an independent and objective data set of market exposures and market event losses, which can be leveraged for a wide-range of applications, such as industry loss warranties (ILWs) and insurance-linked securities (ILS) for catastrophe risk model validation, states PERILS.

Head of PERILS Asia-Pacific, Darryl Pidcock, added: “PERILS has been covering the Australian market for nearly three years during which time we have been increasingly asked by the industry to provide motor exposure and loss data. This enhancement will be the first time that motor exposure and loss data is available in the Australian market.

“Motor is a major line of business in the Australian market and is a significant contributor to losses, as we observed in more recent events such as Sydney Hailstorms in December 2018 and the Australian Hailstorms in January 2020.”

PERILS announced its entry into the Australian market in September 2016, a move which marked the first time it expanded outside of the EU, and its first country within the Asia-Pacific region.