Karen Clark changed the way insurance companies look at their risks when she developed the first catastrophe model.

Today, with her independent experts in catastrophe risk, modeling and management, Clark says she is releasing another product that will "revolutionize the way companies manage risk."

Karen Clark & Co.'s RiskInsight is described as having an "open architecture that enables insurance and reinsurance companies to efficiently utilize the knowledge of multiple internal and external experts" to build proprietary view of risk.

Clark boasts of RiskInsight's transparency—an aspect she says is missing from typical models used by companies to attain probable maximum losses (PMLs).

"Models are great tools," she tells PC360, but PMLs "tend to hide or mask exposure."

She continues, "There are two problems with the models: they are too opaque so you don't know the model's biases; and they are too volatile. Companies cannot be re-underwriting their books of business every time there's a model change."

Instead of a "one-size-fits-all" approach to managing risk with a model, Clark's RiskInsight comes with 100-, 250-, and 500-year "characteristic events" for U.S. hurricanes that can be "floated" every 10 miles along the coast from Texas to the Northeast and superimposed on a company's book of business to "provide a more granular insight into exposure and potential losses," she explains.

Insurers and reinsurers are not given just numbers, but a visual picture as well as graphs and charts to map exposure in order to identify weaknesses and opportunities.

Clark says RiskInsight is designed as an open platform to stay nimble—to evolve quicker when new knowledge becomes available.

"When there is a major event and insurance companies pay out a lot of claims, they can use that information to update and refine the damage functions—which are transparent and customizable," Clark says. "They can do this right away and gain a competitive advantage versus waiting for a model update, which usually takes several years."

Yet the "most revolutionary" aspect of RiskInsight is the access to many more experts and scientific organizations around the world, adds Clark, who is now engaging with academics and organizations to add to the platform.

"Many sophisticated companies already fund their own internal and external research but that research sits beside the model and cannot be incorporated into it because the model is a closed box," Clark says.

Special Reports /

Clark Looks to Revolutionize Risk Management Again with RiskInsight

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