Time for Vacation- and Hurricanes

Are you taking a vacation this year? Almost a third of our readers responding to a recent poll at our website said they weren't. If you are, good luck with that surfside fun, what with the combination of beached oil balls from the BP spill and hurricane season. This year, Weather Services International expects 20 named storms during the season, which ends in November.

Being from the Midwest where this isn't an issue, I find the concept of trying to “ride out” a hurricane unthinkable, but apparently it's pretty common. According to a presentation for the National Evacuation Conference, approximately 350,000 people did not evacuate the area before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. A recent study by Foremost Insurance states that people do this for a variety of reasons–from denial to thinking their structures are strong enough to withstand the impact, to being unable to evacuate because of age or ill health.

But as anyone in the insurance industry can tell you, hurricanes are only part of the natural disaster picture. This year has been especially illustrative of big things that can go wrong, from a massive earthquake in Chile, a powerful windstorm in Europe, flooding in the Midwest, and that pernicious oil spill in the Gulf Coast. By the end of the first quarter, we'd already racked up $23 billion in insured losses for global catastrophes, and that was even before hurricane season.

This month's cover story deals with catastrophes and natural disasters, and how cat modeling to help ameliorate the risk has come of age during the last 20 years, not just for insurers, but agents and brokers as well. In March 1994, just a few months after the Northridge earthquake, only about 10 percent of property insurers used catastrophe models. By 2009, more than 90 percent of insurers were using models, according to RMS.

We also take a peek at how automation efforts are advancing in the E&S market, where a convergence of players is creating a new urgency to win the war on keystrokes. There's also a story on how you can get a leg up with the best carrier in the programs business–all valuable information that can help you place coverage that's beyond the ordinary.

If you haven't been to our website recently, please drop by. We've added to our departments a section dedicated to our nexGens Initiative (nGI) and coming soon, we'll be featuring nGI guest bloggers as well. Enjoy!