Nigel Winspear Head of Natural Catastrophe Analytics Research Sompo International

Dr. Winspear is Head of Natural Catastrophe Analytics Research at Sompo International, based in London. With over twenty years of catastrophe modelling experience, Nigel has worked with model vendors, insurers, brokers and reinsurers across the London, European and Asia-Pacific markets. In a former life he was also global head of model development & evaluation at a major reinsurer. More recently he worked for five years as an independent consultant focussed on Lloyd’s Major Model Change, validating major peril models from both RMS and AIR (Verisk). Nigel is keenly interested in the major challenges facing model developers and validators/ evaluators alike, and you should expect to see that he treats all Cat model results as being ‘negotiable’, knowing that there are many different ways to get to the same EP curve. He is also active in research, having recently authored public white papers on lower tail loss inflation in earthquake catastrophe models and on the severe impact of a future M8 class Kanto earthquake on the global financial markets. Today, he will share his opinions on the definitions of model validation and evaluation; and how we as a modelling community can improve our efforts in this important area.