RMS unveils new suite of climate models with enhanced predictive analysis

RMS, the catastrophe risk modelling company, will launch a new suite of climate change models to assess the near and long term impacts of climate change.

Karen White, chief executive officer at RMS, bemoaned the lack of robust or consistent frameworks that can satisfactorily quantify the physical risks posed by catastrophes in a changing climate, which the new suite of products is designed to address.

Most RMS models, including all major peril models, already incorporate the impact of climate change up until now, but the new RMS Climate Change Models take its existing capabilities further with forward-looking predictive insights and analysis.

Increasing numbers of wildfires, floods and hurricanes mean that climate change insights need to be incorporated into today’s financial decisions, White said. The RMS models are consistent with today’s catastrophe risk analytics and addresses the challenges posed by physical climate change risk and its broad impact across all relevant time scales, she added.

“With increasing board-level attention, stakeholder scrutiny, and regulatory pressure, businesses need to operationalise climate change analytics to make better decisions and enable better transparency,” White said. “It is clear that the financial impacts of climate change are not solely a future problem.”

RMS said the new Climate Change Models empower RMS’s economic modelling framework with “the best climate science consensus”, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The new models will be generally available in June for major peril models North Atlantic Hurricane, Europe Inland Flood and Europe Windstorm. Further models and geographies will follow this initial model suite launch. The RMS climate change solutions also include climate change specialist advisory and consulting expertise and regulatory, ESG and TCFD support.