RMS said it is rolling out new economic exposure datasets for five Asia Pacific countries, information that should better help perform detailed risk assessments for potential natural disasters.

The catastrophe risk management firm said its latest economic exposure databases and industrial clusters catalogs focus on Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, with high-resolution economic exposure databases for Japan and New Zealand.

RMS said its new high-resolution exposure data offers national coverage of building replacement values at chrome and city/ward levels in Japan, and by census mesh block and postal code in New Zealand. It also gives current building-replacement values by line of business, so insurers and reinsurers can concoct a more comprehensive exposure view.

The high-resolution data is designed to help companies spot concentrations of exposures and detail the risk profiles of trouble spots. With that information in hand, the idea is that they can respond with more rigorous risk management strategies, RMS said.

“With high-resolution EEDs, companies will be able to use the new RMS data to reveal where they are under or overexposed, identify growth opportunities and strengthen underwriting,” Pooya Sarabandi, senior director of modeling at RMS, said in prepared remarks.

Overall, what need do these new data products address? RMS said they address realities in Asia such as the fact that many industrial sites are built on floodplains or near the coast, concentrating risk as a result. With that in mind, the economic exposure data for Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia are intended to give insurers and reinsurers a way to better understand or plan for those risks, especially those stemming from natural disasters.

RMS said rigorous risk assessment tools are needed in particular for places such as New Zealand, where earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 damaged or destroyed more than 8,000 commercial buildings. This created major building exposure changes in Christchurch in particular, RMS noted.

Source: RMS