RMS and MSIG Mingtai Insurance collaborate to deepen understanding of typhoon risk in Taiwan

RMS, the world’s leading catastrophe risk management firm, announced a technical collaboration with MSIG Mingtai Insurance to share industry information and insight into the local Taiwanese insurance market, as RMS develops a typhoon model for Taiwan to further effective risk management in the region.

The sharing of information and methodologies between the two companies combines Mingtai’s 50 years of experience in the Taiwan domestic insurance market with RMS’s scientific knowledge of the region.

The collaboration will allow RMS to further its development of a probabilistic typhoon model and provide Mingtai with an improved understanding of typhoon risk for effective risk management.

"A better understanding and modeling of natural hazards, achieved through collaboration, will allow for more effective risk management," said Y. M. Ku, senior executive vice president of MSIG Mingtai. "We are pleased to mutually develop a deeper understanding of Taiwan typhoon risk through this technical collaboration."

Understanding typhoon risk is crucial in the region; the announcement coincides with the climatological period of heightened typhoon activity in the western North Pacific basin, which sees activity year round and in an average year from July to October experiences the highest level of activity.

Taiwan sits on the west of this basin and is exposed to strong winds, heavy rainfall and storm surge associated with typhoons. The typhoon risk to Taiwan was highlighted recently with the landfall of Typhoon Soudelor.

"RMS has a history of collaboration with industry partners, including reinsurers, insurers and brokers in the United States, Europe and Asia," said Yasunori Araga, president, RMS Japan. "We are pleased to extend our technical collaboration in Asia in Taiwan through our partnership with Mingtai."

Currently in development, the RMS Taiwan Typhoon Model will capture the components of typhoon risk through state of the art modeling technologies. It will form part of the Asia Typhoon Model, which is being built on a basin-wide event set.