GIS in Reinsurance

11.03.03 - PartnerRe a global acting reinsurance company is going to estimate losses due to natural hazards online with a GIS-application developed by Ernst Basler + Partners Ltd.

«PRECED - the beginning of a new era of hazard analysis and exposure control»:

this is how PRECED is announced in the PartnerRe internal newsletter. The acronym PRECED means PartnerRe Client Exposure Database. PRECED is a geographic information system (GIS). It can capture and administrate reinsured values and estimate expected losses due to cat exposure (natural hazards).

The article states that:

«SICS/nt is bringing PartnerRe together. However, geographic exposure information - needed for risk adjusted capital analysis, natural catastrophe pricing and event loss estimation - cannot be stored on SICS/nt. This is an issue because geographic exposure information is the basis for accurate exposure control. Thanks to Peter Frei, Head of Exposure Control & Group Retrocessions; Donald Shushak, IT; and Edzard Romaneessen, Research, the storage issue has been resolved.

The Exposure Control team worked with Ernst Basler + Partners to develop a PartnerRe Client Exposure Database (PRECED), a custom-tailored spatial database tool. Launched in Zurich and Singapore in April and in Paris and Toronto in summer 2002, PRECED is a CITRIX based user interface. It directly links an input engine, to import single object or aggregate zonal information on contracts stored in SICS/nt, and a mapping tool called PRECED Atlas.»

PRECED - A Company Standard for Natural Hazards
With PRECED PartnerRe now possesses a system that provides standardized methods for estimating expected losses. Perils currently supported are earthquake, tropical cyclones and flood. The individual underwriter can analyze a specific contract in its geographic context and can compute the expected losses. Further, PRECED enables the department Exposure Control to do company wide portfolio analysis.

PRECED Development will Continue
PRECED enjoys a high user acceptability. Thus, it is not astonishing that functional enhancements are planned. Currently PRECED deals with the lines of business Property, Engineering and Energy On-Shore. Agriculture will be supported in the future. The data import will handle the industry standard formats UNICEDE, RMS and CRESTAplus. Last but not least PRECED will be the turntable for geographic data for other lines of business.