SIRC 2026: Verisk anticipates roll-out of further flood risk models across APAC of further flood risk models across the APAC region

November 5 2026 by

Verisk’s main APAC focus for 2027 will be on releasing more flood models for the region, according to Ashish Jain, vice president and managing director for APAC catastrophe and risk solutions.  

“In the last few years, flooding has been a concern,” he said. “And it is not limited to one or two countries, we are seeing flooding across Asia, for example, whether that be in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, or Japan. Flooding has become a real concern for insurers and reinsurers, which is why, as a cat modelling company, our focus has been more on the flooding side, developing more flood models. 

“Last year we released Malaysia and Indonesia flood models, next year we will be focusing on Australia and New Zealand flood models, and in 2028 in Japan. Flooding is on everybody’s mind, because it is more frequent.” 

He added that Verisk accepts that it will take some time for the company to roll out more dedicated flood models to other countries in Asia, stressing that it is a project that will take years to achieve.   

Nonetheless, the risk modeller is absolutely committed to the APAC market, which remains a core region for the company and one which it sees as offering tremendous growth potential as it continues to mature.  

“The horsepower is there with technology.” Ashish Jain, Verisk

Jain accepted that so far this year the (re)insurance market has not had to suffer a particularly severe catastrophe claims experience, without very large individual loss events showing up on the radar.   

Nonetheless, he stressed, when they come such large nat cat losses do hurt (re)insurance companies, and eat into their earnings in most cases – which has a knock-on effect on pricing, which invariably becomes a concern. 

“This year we’ve been lucky, and we haven’t had any large losses, but one year of not having an event doesn’t mean that we will not see losses. It just takes one event to change the entire perspective,” he added.  

A consistent theme of previous Singapore International Reinsurance Conferences has been the extent to which there continues to be a protection gap, and how best the market can work to bridge this gap.  

Exposure management  

According to Jain, catastrophe modelling has an important role to play, with models helping insurers to understand the extent of the protection gap, highlighting the extent of exposures and enabling this risk to be viewed alongside what is insurable. 

Another issue where cat modelling comes into play is that sometimes, (re)insurers are not able to price the risk because they cannot adequately quantify the risk – something which lies at the heart of what models provide, helping carriers understand particular risks in particular countries: “when the models are not available, it can become a little difficult to price the risk.” 

He suggested that perhaps an even more important tool in helping to lower the protection gap across Asia will be better education for communities and potential buyers of insurance as to why the product matters and why it should not be a secondary consideration.  

Addressing the extent to which AI is changing the risk modelling landscape, Jain said it is certainly helping in various ways, with AI and machine learning enabling the processing of much larger datasets than previously, as well as helping the company to do things which would have taken a much longer time previously. 

 “The horsepower is there with technology,” he said. 

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