Property Claim Services (PCS), a division of Verisk that collects and aggregates the re/insurance industry loss data, has announced that it plans to offer greater granularity for estimates reported under its Global Marine and Energy platform.
From November 1, 2019, PCS will report industry loss estimates for new qualifying loss events by class of business: physical damage, business interruption, liability, and cargo.
The firm explained that the additional granularity will apply to all qualifying events of at least US $500 million, with detailed reporting also applied to smaller events when available.
“Our latest PCS Global Marine and Energy enhancement comes directly from client requests, It’s exciting to show our clients that we can respond quickly and accurately when they ask for something,” said Tom Johansmeyer, head of PCS.
“It’s why we continue to get the opportunity to collaborate with them on new solutions,” he added. “In addition to PCS Global Marine and Energy, it was direct client requests that ultimately led to PCS Global Cyber, PCS Japan, and for that matter, all our new solutions launched over the past few years.”
Johansmeyer continued: “While there’s been plenty of ILW activity on PCS Global Marine and Energy to date, we understand that more would come if we could provide additional granularity. In order to bring new opportunities to the ILS market, we invested in providing LOB estimates, which we believe should stimulate further risk and capital management opportunity.”
“The main reason why we provided the historical reference events below are threshold is that we could. Throughout the data collection process – both during the development of the product and through the post-live monitoring of losses – we found that we learn about a lot more than we cover.
“With the extra information already in-house, we figured that the extra effort to provide some more information could benefit our clients. We won’t be scouring the market for all losses under US$250 million, but when the opportunity to include them presents itself, we’re happy to provide these reference events (which are below our product threshold) as a courtesy to our clients.”
Class-of-business resolution is the first enhancement to PCS Global Marine and Energy, and it will be made available to subscribers immediately upon launch.
It marks the the second specialty lines product enhancement from PCS, following the inclusion of cyber catastrophe in PCS Global Cyber a year ago.
Furthermore, PCS has decided to include several historical events for reference with industry losses ranging from US$100 million to $250 million, currently consisting of five historical events.
“We don’t see any PCS solutions as static,” said Ted Gregory, director of operations at PCS. “For catastrophe and specialty lines loss aggregation platforms alike, we’ve committed to ongoing product enhancements alongside our historical commitment to process improvement.
“With our 70-year history, it’s easy to look at the longevity of PCS tools and lose sight of the importance of adding new capabilities periodically,” he remarked. “We’re more than a growing data set of past losses, and we enjoy showing our clients new ways we can help them.”
Gregory also noted: “The increased granularity we’re providing with PCS Global Marine and Energy has been important to us for a while, and we’re excited to bring it to market. Our clients have been looking for class-of-business estimates, and we believe this will help them better understand ocean marine and offshore energy losses.”
“In loss aggregation product development, the credit always goes to our collaboration partners first,” Johansmeyer remarked. “The effort that our team puts into gathering, understanding, and working with client insured loss data is certainly significant, and our team does fantastic work. However, we always remember what it means for a company to trust you with their data—and to commit to helping you develop a new industrywide solution.”
“Insurers and reinsurers have to expend effort to support a loss-reporting solution,” he concluded/ We understand that. So, for us to get support means that we’ve worked on an idea that our clients see as worth their time and is beneficial to them.”
“Our strategy is focused specifically on client needs, and our internal metrics include adoption speed, which we see as a critical indicator of how important a new PCS product is to the market. Ultimately, we’re in this to help our clients succeed. And if we’re helping them, it will work out well for us too.”
