Praedicat unveils tool to help clients track COVID-19 exposures

Praedicat, the liability risk analytics software company, has launched nine COVID-19 litigation scenarios and a COVID-19 litigation tracker to help clients manage their exposure on casualty lines of business.

The selected scenarios represent a range of ultimate pandemic outcomes, including fully-specified causes of action, numbers of plaintiffs, and defendant industries. The losses from these scenarios can be simulated under various estimates of the potential scale of the pandemic and assigned to potentially responsible companies.

Clients will be able to use the projected industrial footprint of the scenarios to estimate limits exposed and to evaluate the potential tail risk of coronavirus. The information can be used to develop underwriting strategies, evaluate the adequacy of reserves, and to enable them to respond to exposure inquiries from regulatory authorities and rating agencies.

Estimates will be updated regularly as new causes of action are identified and as the course of the pandemic becomes clearer.

Praedicat also unveiled a litigation tracker for US COVID-19 liability filings in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and US federal courts. The data includes all cases and defendants in all jurisdictions related to the coronavirus, often prior to claims made to insurers. The litigation tracking system will also be updated monthly as new cases are filed.

Melissa Boudreau, senior vice president of modeling at Praedicat, said: “The COVID-19 global pandemic is a human tragedy affecting millions of people globally and its course remains uncertain. As recent events have demonstrated, we anticipate there will be scope for arguing in court that individual or business losses were, at least in part, caused by the negligent actions of others. That is why we have developed these scenarios to allow our clients to manage their risks.”

Dave Loughran, senior vice president of product and chief economist at Praedicat, said: “Casualty insurers will need to manage the potential litigation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as anticipating their reserving needs. Our ground-breaking US court liability tracking data tool will allow clients to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on casualty lines of business and help them to manage their exposures.”