Windstorm models

Insurers, reinsurers, and brokers face significant challenges in accurately assessing and managing windstorm risks, requiring sophisticated tools to differentiate location-level risks; model tail risks with greater precision; and provide transparent, high-quality documentation.

Built on decades of expertise, Moody’s RMS™ Europe windstorm high-definition (HD) models can help you build a more insightful view of risk, improve underwriting profitability, and manage regulatory reporting requirements.

Available on Moody’s Intelligent Risk Platform™ and associated applications such as Risk Modeler™ and UnderwriteIQ™, the windstorm models allow a seamless integration together with the Moody’s RMS Europe severe convective storm and Europe inland flood HD models.

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What we do

The Moody’s RMS Europe windstorm HD models use the latest science, data, and technology to describe the most material insured natural catastrophe perils in Europe. Insurers, reinsurers, and brokers can enhance their differentiation of location-level risk, conduct robust tail-risk modeling with more certainty, and gain industry-leading levels of model transparency, including through provision of high-quality model documentation and alternative views of risk.

Unify physical risk modeling

Analyze risk with a consistent approach to hazard and vulnerability across the complete European model suite.

Build a more insightful view of risk

Enhance how you model the complexity of wind and coastal flood risk with more than 600,000 events spread across 50,000 simulation years.

Enhance underwriting profitability

Location-level, ground-up losses represent both the probability of a location taking no damage and the damage level for locations that are impacted.

Manage Solvency II reporting requirements

Use enhanced tail-risk modeling capabilities, advanced financial modeling, and coverage of coastal flooding hazards to confidently build a 200-year view of return period risk and improve (re)insurance.

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How we help

Coverage and scope

The models cover 17 countries, including Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom — representing over 98% of the property gross written premium for Europe.

Advanced modeling framework

The HD approach includes temporal simulation of hazards along a timeline of realistic multi-annual periods. It allows native implementation of windstorm clustering, which is important for understanding seasonality, aggregate tail risk, and solvency capital allocations.

Four-parameter vulnerability

The windstorm vulnerability approach — which is based on four-parameter, damage-ratio distributions — explicitly models the probability of zero damage or total damage for a given hazard intensity. As there is a high probability of zero damage at most common windstorm gust speeds in Europe, this is a key update for the windstorm peril, providing insightful modeling of claim frequency and severity distributions.

Advanced financial modeling

The HD financial model provides an insightful view of how low-severity, location-level losses observed during Europe windstorms interact with location-level deductibles. In addition, the HD financial model offers flexibility for users to define bespoke policy structures, such as user-defined hours clauses and aggregate terms.

Intelligent assumptions

Our models can fill in gaps in defense data and key exposure attributes based on location and claims data from similar properties in the area.

Conversely, our HD framework provides tools to overcome low-resolution data with exposure disaggregation functionality, which exploits a property's characteristics to place them where they are likely located.

Event response

Improved stochastic footprints and an increased number of tail events in the Moody’s RMS Europe windstorm HD models allow more refined stochastic event selections during real-time event response. Transitioning to four-parameter HD vulnerability gives insight into realistic distributions of claim frequency and severity.

Who we help

01 Catastrophe modelers
02 Exposure managers
03 Underwriters

01 Catastrophe modelers

Catastrophe modelers

Through our extensive suite of solutions and capabilities, we help insurers evaluate and manage natural and man-made catastrophe risks, including perils ranging from earthquakes and hurricanes to floods and wildfires.

Exposure managers

Moody’s solutions help exposure managers efficiently identify loss drivers and vulnerabilities across insurance and reinsurance portfolios from a single source of truth.

Underwriters

By using industry-leading science, data, and technology, we help enhance underwriting decision-making across multiple segments and lines of business. Our solutions help underwriters price risks with speed and confidence, modernize workflows, unify risk analytics, and overcome private-entity data gaps.

Where we help

Regional and country windstorm models

News and views

ebook

Moody's

Five ways Moody’s RMS High-Definition Modeling helps you manage windstorm risk

Our eBook Five ways Moody’s RMS High-Definition Modeling helps you manage windstorm risk explores the challenges of estimating windstorm risk and incorporating time-dependent coverage conditions into your pricing and portfolio management decisions. Moody’s RMS HD-modeling framework addresses the distinctive characteristics of windstorm risk and can help you take on risks with confidence.

blog

Oct 10, 2023

Moody's

What is HD modeling?

Our high-definition (HD) framework is designed to take advantage of today’s exceptional computing power and scientific and data analytics advances to offer exceptional clarity, precision, and adaptability, helping (re)insurance industry leaders make informed decisions that drive strategic growth and effectively mitigate risks.

article

Moody's

Earnings perils: redefining the risks that matter

Rob Stevenson asks whether it is time to drop the “secondary” label for perils that are causing increasing losses for insurers.

blog

Dec 04, 2023

Moody's

Windstorm Ciarán: new enhanced event response benefiting from high-definition models

Windstorm Ciarán caused widespread damage and disruption across northwest Europe, with northern France, the Channel Islands, Belgium, and the southern UK being the worst affected.