Risk Management Solutions (RMS), the world's leading provider of products and services for the management of catastrophe risk, today released the RMS(R) Infectious
Disease Model, the first commercially available probabilistic model for assessing the risk of influenza pandemics across multiple countries.

    The RMS model allows life/health insurers and corporate risk managers to quantify mortality and morbidity from nearly 2,000 potential pandemic influenza scenarios, taking into account such factors as likelihood of the pandemic occurring, infectiousness and lethality of the pandemic, demographic impact, location of outbreak, pandemic lifecycle, vaccine production, and national countermeasures. The model covers 31 different countries that collectively comprise over 95% of the global life insurance market.

    "Interest in pandemic flu has increased significantly due to the spread and lethality of the active H5N1 avian flu virus, and many fear that a reassortment may occur, resulting in a human-to-human transmissible virus and global pandemic," said Derek Blum, vice president of emerging risk models for RMS. "We are excited to offer a complete solution for the business and insurance sector, including a product that can quantify the direct consequences of an influenza outbreak and consulting services to
understand the associated business continuity and investment impacts."

    The model was designed to assist both life/health insurers and corporate risk managers in managing their influenza pandemic risk. Insurers can incorporate detailed analysis of their own specific portfolio, allowing the unique characteristics of their respective policyholders to play an important role in the risk assessment process. Similarly, the model can also be leveraged to allow corporate risk managers to understand the operational impact and estimated economic loss associated with a full range of influenza pandemic scenarios at the company-specific level, such as casualty estimates, calculation of work days lost due to staff sickness, and calculation of days lost due to staff caretaker duties.

Influenza pandemic is only the first application of the RMS(R) Infectious Disease Model, which provides a platform allowing RMS clients to model other types of infectious diseases that pose a risk of catastrophic proportions.

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