Property Claim Services has gone live with a new historical catastrophe database for Turkey, an advance that the data analytics provider said will be helpful for both insurers and reinsurers.

“The availability of historical loss data opens more opportunities to source Turkish risk,” Tom Johansmeyer, AVP for PCS strategy and development/Verisk Insurance Solutions, said via email to Carrier Management.

Johansmeyer noted that Turkey is exposed to major earthquake risk, something that carriers are aware of, but also flood risk. With that in mind, he said that having a historical database for the region that covers both “could help open their eyes to a second important peril.”

PCS developed the historical database with the Istanbul Underwriting Center (IUC), a management and consultancy services group focused on insurance. The product—PCS Turkey—provides insured loss estimates for catastrophe and noteworthy noncatastrophe events going back to the İzmit and Düzce earthquakes of 1999.

Insurers and reinsurers are able to use the data to improve insurance operations, risk transfer and other post-event management to more effectively meet the needs of customers, shareholders and other stakeholders, PCS said.

PCS Turkey also provides aggregate insured loss estimates for the two 2011 Van earthquakes and the 2009 Marmara flood. The service additionally offers industrywide insured loss estimates for three events that did not qualify as PCS-designated catastrophe events but which could still benefit global reinsurers and insurers.

While earthquake is the most frequent event type in the data set, PCS Turkey also has a loss estimate for the 2009 Marmara flood that was designated a catastrophe event, as well as two other flood events that did not meet the TRY30 million threshold for catastrophe designation. PCS Turkey provides support for all events that meet the catastrophe definition standard, which includes all natural and man-made perils.

Source: PCS/Verisk Analytics