AXA XL will share anonymised claims and nat cat data with risk managers in a bid to help them better model their nat cat risks, says Corinne Vitrac, head of AXA XL Risk Consulting.

In an exclusive interview with StrategicRISK at the Ferma Forum yesterday, Vitrac explained that AXA XL will expand its portfolio catastrophe loss modelling – first launched in France in 2019 – across Europe.

As part of its proposition, nat cat claims and risk exposure data – typically kept in-house by insurers and used only for internal purposes – will be made available to users of the model to help them garner greater insights into their potential exposures.

The model draws insight gathered from €2bn-worth of claims made across AXA Group. It works by overlaying risks manager’s company data onto the insurer’s data, to help provide a clear assessment of the company’s potential financial losses, business interruption implications and physical losses.

“We have an extremely powerful data management methodology,” she says. “For our own risk management security, we need [robust] data and modelling. And because of our size and long-term expertise, we have accumulated non-comparable volumes of data.”

She adds: “The first important step is understanding the risk. And it is this need that we are trying to address with tools to map out the threat.

“We do this by using the experience accumulated by AXA XL, including the €2bn Group claims data. Our objective is to give this knowledge back to the client, not only in terms of [understanding] a single risk but the [knowledge] that we’ve accumulated to identify potential risks.”

The model draws on a three-step risk assessment method:

  • Identifying and defining natural hazards, their frequency and intensity, based on historical data and modelling (seismological, geophysical, hydrological and climatological);
  • The assessment of the vulnerability of the companies’ sites, accounting for type, design and quality of construction, etc.;
  • The assessment of probable financial losses, including the damage to buildings, equipment, stock and impact on business.

The assessment, which can be generated for all a company’s sites or narrowed down by country or region, will help risk managers to better understand their exposure to natural hazards and to implement risk management and risk transfer measures that accurately suit their needs.

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