Cat bond modeller AIR Worldwide to rebrand under parent Verisk

Well-known catastrophe risk modelling firm AIR Worldwide, which remains the most prolific when it comes to providing risk modelling services to the catastrophe bond market, is being rebranded to fall under the name of its parent Verisk, where it will be known for its “extreme event solutions”.

AIR Worldwide was perhaps the first recognised catastrophe modeller for the global insurance and reinsurance industry and was founded as Applied Insurance Research in 1987 by renowned catastrophe model developer Karen Clark.

The company was acquired by Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO), a division of Verisk Analytics, in 2002 and renamed as AIR Worldwide.

Since, then AIR has been one of the dominant forces in insurance and reinsurance risk modelling and analytics, but with parent Verisk offering analytics services across the breadth of the market chain, it makes sense to fold AIR under the well-known brand.

Last week, Verisk announced that AIR Worldwide would now be known under the Verisk name, for its extreme event solutions, “to make it easier for our customers to immediately recognize and utilize the products and services Verisk provides.”

It’s the end of an era for more than just the AIR name, as Verisk is also transitioning other companies under its main brand, so in future ISO, Sequel, Xactware, and ISO Claims Partners will also become parts of Verisk.

“While our company brand names will transition to Verisk, you will continue to see some of these names featured in the names of our individual solutions,” the company said.

Adding, “While our individual company brand names are changing, what remains rocksteady is our commitment to continuous innovation and the creation of customer-driven solutions that move your business and our industry forward. We are excited by the future and the opportunity to build it together with you.”

AIR Worldwide was a particularly recognisable brand in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, especially when it came to issuance of catastrophe bonds.

The company has been dominant in providing third-party catastrophe modelling services to the catastrophe bond market and also acts as calculation agent for many issuances.

Under Verisk, already PCS is a recognised provider of loss data for constructing industry loss triggers for cat bonds and other ILS structures, so Verisk is about to become a far more commonly used name in the cat bond market and also a feature of the data we track here at Artemis.

Currently, AIR Worldwide is named as modeller for almost $25 billion of outstanding catastrophe bonds, across some 90 in-force cat bond issuances, according to Artemis’ data.

That’s around 70% of the outstanding catastrophe bond and related insurance-linked securities (ILS) market that AIR has modelled, which is a significant lead on the other recognised players in that marketplace.