Two of the world’s largest catastrophe modellers have entered into an agreement to share exposure data.

The multi-year agreement between Risk Management Solutions (RMS) and AIR Worldwide (AIR) is limited to exposure data schemas and does not include results data schema from either company, it is understood.

“Under the multi-year agreement, we will share relevant elements of our exposure data schemas and provide each other the right to develop functionality in our products to directly import and export exposure data to or from each of our data formats,” said RMS in a statement to

The Royal Gazette. “Future exposure schema updates will also be shared to ensure we can update our applications appropriately.”

Re/insurance underwriting becomes more complex and nuanced, a challenge that has arisen for some companies who use multiple models, each of which comes with its own proprietary data schema.

“We recognise that as an increasing number of companies are using multiple models, they have been struggling with the workflow inefficiencies of moving and translating exposure data between the models,” said RMS. “Current options for addressing this problem are limited, and will remain imperfect until the catastrophe modellers cooperate to come up with a better solution sponsored and endorsed by each company.”

RMS said it is currently evaluating opportunities to form similar agreements with other catastrophe modelling firms.

While cat modeller Eqecat hasn’t officially confirmed that it is in talks with its competitors to share information, the company supports the initiative.

“Transparent data standards for catastrophe modelling benefit Eqecat’s clients and the insurance risk transfer marketplace, and Eqecat supports the initiative to improve the clarity of vendor data model inputs,” Eqecat said in a statement.

Many are applauding the move saying that the data sharing plan is good news for the re/insurance industry.

“As we try to obtain best possible pricing for our clients exposures, we need all parties to be pulling in the same direction,” said Gary Reynolds, partner with Bermuda-based JLT Re (Bermuda) Ltd. “Workflow inefficiencies of moving and translating exposure between models’ is a time-consuming exercise, and this co-operation/collaboration is going to save many man hours.”