Aon expands open catastrophe modelling in Latin America

Aon is expanding its use of open catastrophe modelling in Latin America by delivering ERN’s regional catastrophe models through the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework.

The move brings ERN’s Latin America earthquake and catastrophe models into Aon’s Impact Forecasting workflow via its ELEMENTS platform, giving insurers and reinsurers greater transparency and flexibility when assessing risk in the region. Latin America has become an increasingly attractive diversification market, with a catastrophe profile that skews more toward earthquakes than hurricanes.

By supporting Oasis, an open source catastrophe modelling framework, Aon is giving clients more control over how models are used, customized, and compared. The ERN models join other Impact Forecasting models already supported in Oasis, including Europe windstorm and flood, Canada flood, Thailand flood, and the Manhattan blast model.

Aon positions Impact Forecasting as both a model provider and a technology platform. Through ELEMENTS, clients can access Impact Forecasting models alongside third party vendor models, allowing them to benchmark, blend, and stress test different views of risk within a single workflow.

The firm says open modelling is increasingly important as climate volatility and regulatory scrutiny push insurers to better understand assumptions, data sources, and model behavior. Oasis allows users to adjust models to reflect their own exposures and claims experience, rather than relying solely on black box vendor outputs.

Impact Forecasting also uses open modelling beyond the commercial insurance market, including public sector risk financing and disaster risk reduction initiatives. This includes work with the Insurance Development Forum and development banks, where Aon has contributed open event sets and catastrophe scenarios for regions such as Southeast Asia and South Asia.