Rolling the dice disaster

Hurricane Andrew from the country in 5 cases, from 9 am to she knew that only the path of the storm and its intensity, but the information has helped to know the estimates of losses: $ 13 billion, or Later, when the owners in south Florida had ignored building regulations. You faxed, the figures relating to insurers, then went to the lunch. The scuttlebutt Lloyd’s since the losses could perhaps no more than 6 billion dollars. “Nobody believes,” she says of their assessment and, as new in the office, their phones ring. “People were outraged,” she said. “They thought I was crazy.”

It took months for insurers for their losses dead: $ 15.5 billion. (Code of building in south Florida has not been strictly enforced.) Clark was right: the potential financial losses of various disasters were too large and too complex to evaluate, through human intuition.

Clark’s company, air, soon, over 25 Ph.Ds on staff and two other competitors, Eqecat and solutions for risk management. In its Bay Area offices, RMS now more than 100 meteorologists, seismologists, oceanographers, physicists, engineers and statisticians. The company agreed models here and there, but on one point: they are unanimous: Four outgrown natural hazards, the insurer had the capacity to sustain them - USA hurricane, earthquakes in California, storms and earthquakes European Japanese.

More John Seo saw in the insurance sector, the more it seemed to be teetering on the brink of ruin. By their nature, major catastrophic risks of the early 21st century, could not be removed diversified, as it had in the past. Wealth became too concentrated in a handful of places extremely treacherous. The only way to eliminate risk, it was far and the only way to do so on Wall Street. Losses suffered by themselves the greatest natural disaster would be a drop in the ocean of all capital markets.

Karen Clark’s model and those of other companies, for Seo, the starting point. They were not perfect, but they were, he felt better than good enough to take financial decisions. In the spring of 2001, to the surprise of his colleagues, left his great Seo Wall Street opened a firm and hedge funds.

But four years later, the insurance company is not yet fully understand their situation: they had $ 500 billion in exposure to disasters had sold, but only about $ 5 billion in value-Cat Bonds . However, he could see their uneasiness in prices: The hurricanes and earthquakes, insurance premiums returned crazy about each year. The risk in insurance for natural disasters was real, physical and, in principle, quantify and from year to year, not much change, if ever. A great potential, social opportunities moments favourable market was born. All that was required by a surge of nature.

As Katrina has focused on New Orleans, borrowing a cat named Kamp Re, published by the insurance company Zurich, was suddenly in danger. After RMS, there was a chance of 1.08 percent, Kamp-back, all owners borrowing lose their money - provided that scientists really understood the chances of winning. One of its largest customers was John SEO.

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