Australian natural hazards research centre Risk Frontiers has joined forces with US group Risk Management Solutions (RMS) on a new open platform built exclusively for insurers.

The platform, RMS(one), is a real-time exposure and risk management system allowing insurers and reinsurers to run a range of models concurrently, including those from other modellers and their own proprietary platforms.

It will also provide greater visibility of and control over modelling assumptions, giving insurers a more complete view of their exposures.

Risk Frontiers, Latin American modeller ERN and UK flood specialist JBA Risk Management are the first three organisations to make their models available on the platform, which is due to launch next April.

Risk Frontiers’ involvement will give RMS clients new modelling capabilities for Australian flood and bushfire, plus an alternative view of perils for which RMS models already exist, RMS says. 

ERN will give access to its Mexico hurricane models and JBA will open up its Thai flood models.

The collaboration “directly addresses a critical need of many of our clients as they continue to expand the breadth and sophistication of their catastrophe risk management practices, and we look forward to announcing additional partners in the future”, RMS Chief Products Officer Paul VanderMarck said.

“Being a partner on RMS(one) is of enormous benefit to our clients and those of RMS,” Risk Frontiers MD John McAneney said.

“Running our models alongside RMS and others in a single platform significantly reduces the complexity of deployment for companies and provides them with a much richer picture of risk.”

The tie-up follows calls from insurers and reinsurers for better integration of catastrophe models. 

RMS announced the partnership at its client conference in Boston last week.