AIR Worldwide Releases New Reinsurance Catastrophe Modeling Software

BOSTON, Massachusetts, Aug. 1 -- Verisk, a data analytics provider, issued the following news release:

Catastrophe risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide today announced that it has released Touchstone Re(TM), a new catastrophe modeling software application designed for estimating the loss potential of reinsurance contracts and portfolios, industry loss warranties, and insurance-linked securities. AIR Worldwide is a Verisk (Nasdaq:VRSK) business.

Touchstone Re, a successor to CATRADER(R), enables companies to model and price complex reinsurance structures, understand where their exposures are concentrated around the globe in a visually intuitive way, roll up their portfolios and view their overall risk aggregation, leverage AIR's Industry Exposure Database to benchmark their portfolio risk relative to the industry, and estimate loss potential when detailed exposure data may not be available.

"With over 20 years of experience with CATRADER and its predecessor products, we're excited to see the next generation features available now in Touchstone Re," said Nick Datt, vice president, enterprise risk management, Odyssey Reinsurance Company. "One feature that stood out to us is the ability to visualize complex reinsurance structures on-screen and easily modify them using the drag-and-drop tool. Our global teams are excited about this new functionality as well as the speed enhancements and look forward to incorporating Touchstone Re into a much more streamlined workflow for both treaty pricing and corporate rollup."

Touchstone Re represents the next step in establishing an ecosystem across AIR products. Organizations that also license Touchstone(R) will now be able to transfer loss results into Touchstone Re with just a few clicks, thus enabling users to access data quickly by line of business down to subarea resolution, without having to export it manually from one application and import it into another.

"Having experienced Touchstone Re as an early adopter, I'm truly looking forward to the release of the application," said Martin Hamrin, senior vice president, group underwriting analytics, Sirius International. "As a client that licenses both Touchstone and now Touchstone Re, the ability to transfer data seamlessly between the platforms is a welcome addition and will save our catastrophe modelers significant time."

"Touchstone Re not only incorporates the key functionality from CATRADER, it also includes a host of new features across core reinsurance pricing and portfolio management workflows while being a more scalable application with a fresh user interface and streamlined navigation," said Sudhir Potharaju, senior vice president, product, at AIR Worldwide. "Touchstone Re is not just a new user interface on an established application. By saving multiple loss perspectives simultaneously and running portfolio analyses up to 75 percent faster, Touchstone Re can save users significant time, leaving them free to interpret their results and make more informed risk management decisions."

In addition to releasing Touchstone Re, AIR updated its flagship catastrophe risk modeling platform, Touchstone, to include enhancements that enable users to perform new analytics, customize the software, and improve and simplify users' workflows. These enhancements include support for zone-based analytics for detailed loss modeling, improved management of Touchstone projects and data transfer between companies, an extensive refresh of the user interface, and the ability for clients to build and use custom models.