Market Risk
Holborn’s Reinsurance Security Committee (a select group of our senior managers across multiple disciplines) meets regularly to review the financial condition of each reinsurer. Each entity is closely monitored for financial and operational performance through meetings with management, rating agency activity and news releases. Our monthly newsletters keep clients informed of any noteworthy changes.

RISKRATER ™ ®

Holborn can provide clients access to RiskRater ™ ®, a proprietary reinsurance pricing tool that was specifically designed for the county mutual space. RiskRater ™ ® employs a systematic approach to pricing that is consistent across client companies. Smaller companies with less credible rating histories are grouped into cohorts and compared with industry information to enable a more informed view of risk.

RiskRater ™ ® has a Microsoft Excel-based interface that is utilized for day-to-day pricing operations. The Excel interface is connected to a database where all data (present and historical) is stored and archived, allowing access to detailed information from pricing in prior years

RiskRater ™ ® gives clients a systematic, operationalized pricing process. It allows more rigorous pricing than “what did we do last year?” and blends hard data with pricing judgement where appropriate.

The consistency in pricing methodology applies across client companies, states, and from year-to-year using methods common among reinsurers

Enterprise Risk
Success in an increasingly competitive environment requires a full commitment from everyone at every level of your company. But the rewards for all the efforts of underwriters, claims handlers, marketing reps, and accountants are in jeopardy if the entire risk landscape is not rigorously understood and proactively acted upon. Enterprise Risk Management describes a framework in which the short- and long-term value of a company is maximized through assessing, monitoring, and ultimately exploiting risks from all sources.

At the highest level these hazards are classified as underwriting (e.g., mass torts, cat losses, pricing disclipine), financial (e.g., credit and return risk), operational (e.g., reputation, product design), and strategic (e.g., access to capital, competition). Senior management must assure that all sources of risk are considered and managed to a tolerable level, particularly at companies subject to Own Risk Solvency Assessment (“ORSA”) compliance. Holborn’s broad knowledge of insurance and reinsurance operations is leveraged to identify and quantify these risks, maximizing the ongoing value of our business partners’ companies.

Non-Cat Loss Analysis
It can be very challenging to discern whether changes in underwriting results are due to shifts in the underlying risk (parameter variation) or just normal randomness (process variation). Sometimes several changes can offset one another and produce seemingly stable results, masking the true dynamic. Holborn’s proprietary tools are designed to decompose the loss experience and measure it across multiple dimensions, thereby exposing and identifying emerging trends in order to provide a deeper understanding of our clients’ portfolios.

Rating Agencies
One of the key objectives of an insurer’s operating strategy is to maintain a target financial rating. Holborn has extensive experience helping clients balance conflicting objectives of growth, profitability, investment returns, capital adequacy, and return on capital. Our Dynamic Financial Analysis (DFA) model enables clients to track these various performance measures and predict how various operational decisions can be expected to impact the company’s rating.

Property Cat
By their very nature, catastrophic property losses can wreak havoc on businesses and personal property, as well as the balance sheet. Media coverage of the devastation from a hurricane or tornado often makes these events seem “unexpected.” Even though recorded weather history is relatively limited (on a geologic scale), it’s clear that outliers, storms of extraordinary magnitude, have occurred before and will again.

It’s not a question of “if” a large event will occur, but “when.” Taking a long-term view, we can help quantify the exposure and secure proper protection at the most efficient cost. We’ve developed a unique approach to analyzing property catastrophe risk that combines information from your portfolio and your experience with data from weather services and the latest science-driven vendor models. Senior in-house cat modelers, claim reviewers, and actuaries all work together to produce useful and practical guidance for managing property cat risk so you are prepared for any event…before it occurs.

Other Cat
It shouldn’t be a surprise that some of the largest insured events we see are not property, but liability-driven. Losses stemming from workers’ compensation, mass tort, clash, runaway defense costs, product liability, and punitive damage judgments can quickly add up to amounts greater than most weather or fire damages. Holborn monitors the litigious US landscape, tracking the latest judicial rulings and regional and local hotspots.

Contract wordings are continuously evolving to stay on top of emerging risks such as cyber, intellectual property, and labor laws. Working together, we ensure that the proper coverage and limits are maintained. Clients get the benefit of our broad industry perspective, useful not only for reinsurance protection, but also for underwriting as well.