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President
Chief Executive Officer
Aon Re Services Analytics Team

Executive Vice President
Head of Rating Agency Services

Executive Vice President
Chief Actuary

Executive Vice President
Head of Catastrophe Management

Head of Catastrophe Modeling
United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East, Asia

One major new client said Aon Re Analytics emerged in a class of its own after her company conducted a full-scale review a year ago. "On the casualty side, they have very sophisticated loss modeling. It goes far beyond what we could do or anything else we saw in the industry."

On the property-catastrophe side, Aon Re Analytics' CAT modeling is exceptionally strong, offering a multiple model view. "Their modeling resources are incredible," she said.

As for service, it's first rate. "They always provide additional information very quickly," she said, "and they are very helpful in assisting me to communicate with top management."

As one measure of the boost in the status of Aon Re Services in the marketplace, one recent client admiringly said the company goes "above and beyond" what is required of them. The client, which has some reinsurance capability of its own, was impressed with Aon Re's Stephen Mildenhall, executive vice president, chief actuary, and his ability to bring in the right people, getting himself and his team regularly in on calls.

"They were technically very solid, very creative; they had lots of great ideas," said the client.

This kind of aggressive but thorough approach to bringing in new business is characteristic of the Aon Re group under Bryon Ehrhart, president and chief executive, and his team.

It has led, in Ehrhart's words, "to an incredible transformation from a small reinsurance brokerage firm with a focus on specialty insurance to the leading global reinsurance (firm) that decisively brings ... a vast range of capital market strategies to the global risk management marketplace."

One of the most dramatic examples of that expertise in action last year was what Ehrhart's group did with the divestiture of Combined Insurance Cos. of America, a company that was sold by Aon Corp.

Said Aon Re's Greg Heerde, executive vice president, head of rating agency services: "My team and I were engaged as an advisor to CICA and tasked with managing the ratings component of their sale. Aon Capital Markets did a complete analysis of the client's structure, focusing on how they were being charged for capital. At the time, CICA had a lot of subsidiaries 'stacked on top of one another,' and we advised them on how to restructure the organization."

The expertise of Heerde and his group allowed CICA to take out a dividend before its sale was complete without a change in ratings.

"This helped to maintain positive projections for potential buyers of CICA," noted Heerde.

Aon Re also offered guidance to another client that was caught off guard when A.M. Best said it was concerned about the client's capital adequacy. The ratings agency thought the company had grown too quickly. Had the company's rating been downgraded, it would have had a significant negative impact on its business.

But, according to Heerde, "we helped the client tell its story in a new way. A.M. Best re-evaluated their rating, seeing that the company was not as new as the rating agency had thought and that they were getting (unfairly) penalized for it."

In another instance, reported CEO Ehrhart, "we recently closed a catastrophe bond deal with a new client that wanted access to capital markets to complement their reinsurance programs."

And in yet another indication of how far Ehrhart's group has come in just a few years, there's the recent case of Aon Re providing consultative services to a multiline business and personal insurance company at a time when Standard & Poor's was changing its capital model. Aon Re did a review and found that the client would not have enough capital under the new system to support its current rating. In fact, the client would be nearly $800 million short of the requirement.

Aon Re coached the company through the process of calculating a discount. After conversations with S&P, the client got credit for an additional $1 billion worth of reserves. Thus, the client went from not having enough capital to having enough capital to support its rating.

Senior Vice President
Guy Carpenter i-aXs Team
Edina, Minn.

Managing Director

Managing Director

Managing Director

Small clients and large clients have good things to say about Guy Carpenter's i-aXs team.

Said one small client, for whom Carpenter's analytic team does all its work: "For a small client like us, that means we get access and use of all the major models. They also provide us with capital-markets advice, and their advice has been right on the market.

And the ratings agency people at Carpenter, with the analytics team, have been a great help in cementing our relationships with A.M. Best, Moody's and Standard & Poor's."

Another client said: "We found the platform especially helpful with claims. They helped us with analytics and predictive modeling on our claims administration. It also helps us with our underwriting and gives us a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The people there are top notch."

A client with its own in-house catastrophe modeling capabilities who also uses the i-aXs platform said the Guy Carpenter platform often serves it well. "The Carpenter team was there when we needed them with a platform that is used throughout the industry," this client said.

The team was the first of its kind to deliver a Web platform with reporting and mapping to not only the property line of business but also the workers' compensation, accident and health lines.

The Edina, Minn.-based squad works on the i-aXs Web-based platform in sales, development and product deployment. It is noted for working with industry "heavies" AIG, Farmers, Zurich, Chubb, Travelers and The Hartford, as well as other clients, to customize the i-aXs platform for exposure and accumulation management and desktop underwriting.

The company helped several clients to specifically lower probable-maximum-loss-to-premium ratios by utilizing portfolio management tools in i-aXs, in addition to delivering a complete claims management process to a top insurance company in the United States.

Members of the team have varied backgrounds in catastrophe modeling, engineering, programming and technical brokering.

Managing Director Lara Mowery brings excess and surplus and Florida market expertise to customize the platform in those areas.

Managing Director Shajy Mathai has broad expertise in customizing hardware for optimal performance in response time, as well as understanding technical aspects of developing business intelligence tools.

Managing Director Amy Block has brought her skills in implementing products and solutions on a large scale to the team.

And, finally, Senior Vice President Matt Witte utilizes his portfolio management expertise to help clients dig into their portfolios and implement risk management strategies.

Executive Vice President
Leader of U.S. ReMetrics team
Benfield ReMetrics
Minneapolis