' The industry needs more collaboration on modelling to deal with losses from hurricanes warns Ameet Dave, commercial director of ROOM Solutions.
"I would call for a great deal more collaboration within the industry and in particular, for those people who supply models to the industry, and to be very realistic about what is possible and where the limitations are. It is really important we understand all of those issues."
But he warned that it is very unlikely that any single model will emerge in the next few years, that will with precision, be able to predict losses from something like Katrina.
"Not least because there'll be a whole set of things that will happen for the first time which will not be in those models, and it's important that we are very open about that fact."
Last year's hurricanes cost sufficient to push the UK's monthly trade balance deepest into the red. "So the extent that we control the losses, it makes a big difference not only to this industry, but also the UK as a whole."
So going forward two factors are going to play a critical role. "The first one is, we need to give a great deal of thought to how do we use all of the different resources that are available, to get an assessment of risk.
"The second is, we need much wider understanding in terms of the limitations, as well as the capabilities."
