23 March 2026

On 4 March 2026, we partnered with the School of Mathematics at the academic and industry event 'Modelling the Unprecedented', to address the challenge of insurance resilience in an era of extreme climate events.
View from the back of a large meeting room with rows of people watching a presentation

The world is witnessing a dramatic surge in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, challenging risk assessment and capital management across the insurance industry. At ‘Modelling the Unprecedented', we examined how the development and use of established catastrophe models can benefit from research advances in extreme value theory, uncertainty quantification, climate modelling, and financial analysis.

First we heard from industry speakers Christos Mitas from Moody's Analytics, Pete Rutherford from Aon, and Manoranjan Muthusamy from Flood Re, who shared their take on how climate risk is affecting the insurance business.

Academics from different disciplines then shared insights from their research.

  • Mathematicians Amy Wilson and Jordan Richards spoke about how the latest techniques in modelling and statistics can help us to understand flooding and other extreme weather events.
  • Luca Taschini and Raffaella Calabrese from the Business School provided insights into how climate risk affects lending decisions and financial markets.
  • Gabi Hegerl and Simon Tett from GeoSciences looked at how to estimate the risk of extreme events and understand the earth’s climate tipping points.

The event concluded with a panel session focusing on how academia and industry can collaborate to directly inform business practice and environmental policy.