General Insurance Article - New data standard built for the reinsurance industry

 To deliver this open standard, RMS has tapped global (re)insurance leaders to join the RDO steering committee. The committee will guide the growth and development of the RDO schema. As a single, auditable data standard that supports a wide range of analytics it can drive significant efficiency gains and cost reductions across the industry. The RDO opens up new opportunities as (re)insurers build product across a diverse set of risks. This supports interoperability, which doesn’t exist today.
 
 The (re)insurance industry is challenged by an evolving risk landscape, dominated by complex perils such as wildfire, flood and cyber, while at the same time driving for maximum cost/benefit from investments in risk analytics. RMS is developing an efficient technical framework that supports new modeling approaches for the risks of today and the future. It provides a flexible, transparent, and efficient framework that can support state-of-the-art modeling for traditional property catastrophes as well as any line of business.
 
 “The RMS data formats (RDM and EDM) are the de-facto standards for cat risk data exchange and play a critical role throughout the insurance value chain,” said Karen White, Chief Executive Officer at RMS. “The industry and RMS need a new modern data structure to support high quality models for new classes of risk and to solve our clients long-standing challenges around financial modeling and interoperability. Today we introduced the RDO, enabling a completely open, interoperable and flexible data standard. We are sharing this open data standard with the risk industry so that anyone can adopt it. Our experience tells us that this open and extensilble approach is a critical value driver for the market.”
 
 Open Standards to Enable Risk Quantification For Everyone
 The RDO was designed by RMS as a comprehensive framework that provides a generic end-to-end structure for all types of risk and analytics. Building on top of the existing RMS Exposure Data Management (EDM) and Risk Data Model (RDM), the RDO supports new industry models and software requirements. It empowers the user by providing a clearer picture of their complete risk. RDO is in production today on RMS Risk Intelligence™, the open RMS platform.
 
 Ryan Ogaard, Senior Vice President at RMS said, “The RDO supports new classes of models while maintaining the ability to use existing data structures such as the EDM and RDM. It will significantly improve efficiency and interoperability throughout the industry as it takes the guesswork out of information exchange. It is suitable for a wide range of models and is extensible to new classes of risk – by RMS or anyone else. By contributing the RDO to the industry as an Open Standard, we hope (re)insurers, brokers, modelers and others, will harness the RDO to create new opportunities and solve the puzzle of model interoperability.”
 
 The RDO Steering Committee will review and drive the advancement of this open framework to ensure it continues to support the evolving needs of everyone in the industry. The RDO will be publicly available in January 2020 following the initial work of the steering committee members to enable any user to access the schema code, documentation, and tooling that translates between formats. Anyone can contribute extensions and modifications to the original standard.
 
 White concluded: “The complexity of today’s risks has increased exponentially, made clear by the losses seen in floods, hurricanes and wildfires over the past two years. We understand that the success of our clients requires a fresh way of thinking and a more flexible and transparent approach for new lines of business and market opportunities beyond what was previously possible. By introducing the RDO, we’re ushering in a new era of accessibility and collaboration on risk.”