E70: Tom Johansmeyer of PCS - Aggregating Catastrophe Data For Industry Benchmarking and ILS Parametric Index Triggering

Tom Johansmeyer is the Michael Lewis of Insurance. As the head of Verisk's PCS division, Tom is continuing the PCS tradition of aggregating insured industry losses, and taking that to a whole new level. PCS, globally known for aggregating, weather, earthquake, fire and other natural catastrophes is expanding into cyber, terror and other specialty lines, and taking the show on the road...globally. Tom and I discuss the value of aggregated industry losses, how the industry is creatively using those loss figures and the new products being deployed to help the insurance ecosystem smoothly transfer risk. Armed with a philosophy degree, tenure at a consulting firm and a love of writing, Tom got into insurance at Guy Carpenter. Tom was the creator of Captial Ideas and has kept his writing and marketing skills sharp over at PCS. PCS is an advertiser of Insurance Nerds...join the Reinsurance Revolution!

HOW TO CONNECT WITH TOM JOHANSMEYER:
LinkedIn
Twitter 

MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST:
PCS - Property Claims Service - a division of Verisk Analytics
ILW - Industry Loss Warranty
Brent Poliquin's Podcast on Insurance Linked Securities
Retrocession Insurance (trades)
Indemnity Triggers - An loss amount for the sponsor (usually an insurer) of the insurance security corresponding to the actual losses they sustained for an event. Tom discussed different trigger types. The article referenced here describes many of them. PCS specializes in collecting industry data which is often used in Industry Loss triggers
Basis Risk - In ILS, because ILS sponsors have different loss triggers available to them aside from triggers on their own losses (see indemnity above), sponsors run the risk that an event payout, based on a non-indemnity trigger, may not match their true losses. With basis risk, a sponsor may receive more payout than they had insured losses, or worse, less payout than their total event loss. 
Costa Concordia loss
Deep Water Horizon loss
Jubilee loss
Kea Trader loss
Equifax Cyber Breach