Underwriting, actuarial, and retirement services group Aon Australia will offer its clients valuable data to help track extreme weather events and climate risk, announcing a partnership with critical event management platform developer, Catalyst Technologies.
Through the deal, Aon clients will gain access to iluminr, Catalyst’s threat intelligence and critical event management platform, which provides early warning alerts and real-time tracking of weather emergencies across the globe.
Aon clients will be able to tap into iluminr’s live data feeds that track, in real-time, weather-related threats, supporting proactive communication and resolution of emerging climate-related threats, the company said.
Beyond weather alerts, Catalyst, an Australian start-up, also has separate tracking services for cyber-attack, health, natural disaster or security threats.
Aon Australia’s managing director for specialties, Jennifer Richards, acknowledging the persistent risks of the continent’s climate extremes, said the partnership would “further deepen and expand [Aon’s] client offering”, providing access to business preparedness and continuity platforms “ahead of, and responding to, weather threats”.
“Australia’s built environment is heavily exposed to a wide variety of extreme weather perils,” she said.
“Our common goal is to ensure that all Australian businesses remain prepared for and able to respond to severe weather events and build resilience to be better prepared for future events.”
Marcus Vaughan, Catalyst Technologies co-founder & chief growth officer, stressed the “compounding effects of increasing physical climate risks” with a “retreating insurance market”.
He said adoption of technology would ensure clients are able to “increase their threat awareness, and improve their crisis response time and effectiveness”.
“By getting ahead of extreme weather events, organisations can directly reduce the impact and improve recovery timeframes.”
The cost of extreme weather events in Australia has more than doubled since the 1970s, reaching $35 billion between 2009 and 2019, a report last year by the Climate Council revealed.
According to the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), estimated losses from this year’s once-in-a-century floods, which devastated large parts of Northern NSW and Queensland, would reach more than $567 million, arising from around 38,oo0 individual claims.
Last year alone, four severe weather events contributed the vast majority of Australia’s insured loss total in 2020 of $4.5 billion, Aon’s global Weather, Climate & Catastrophe Insight 2020 Annual Report revealed.
Aon, a professional services firm specialising in insurance, provides a broad range of risk, reinsurance, retirement, and health solutions.
