Risk modelling in the re/insurance industry has a long and storied history. In relatively recent years, explicit modelling of catastrophe (cat) risk has arisen as a result of crisis and opportunity; in many ways, cat modelling has since been established as a standalone industry in and of itself. Whilst 3rd party (private vendor) cat models are routinely licensed by re/insurers in order to inform their views of cat risk, the sophistication of the models - and of associated market regulation - has evolved to the point that companies increasingly need to look to teams of applied scientists, engineers and statisticians in order to implement them appropriately.

This talk will give an overview of contemporary cat modelling and, from an atmospheric peril point of view, will detail challenges that applied teams face when deploying the models. It will then introduce some collaborative industry-academia projects being run within the science function at AXA XL in order to overcome some of those challenges, before presenting some conjectures on the likely trajectory of cat modelling in the near future.