RMS Debuts the RMS (one) Real-Time Exposure and Risk Management Environment

Catastrophe modeling firm RMS has announced RMS (one), a real-time exposure and risk management environment designed to enable insurance carriers to manage all of their risk models, exposures and analytics on a single, open platform. RMS debuted RMS (one) at its Exceedence 2013 conference this week; RMS (one) will be generally available in spring 2014.

"RMS(one) represents the kind of innovation the CAT modeling industry needs," comments Mark Breading, a partner with Boston-based analyst and advisory firm SMA. "This is a big step in the right direction towards providing more flexibility, more transparency, and a more comprehensive view of risk in the models that are so vital to the industry."

Through the use of newly developed proprietary technology, RMS(one) will provide intuitive, enterprise-wide access to real-time risk intelligence, enabling decision-makers at every level of the organization - from risk analysts to the CEO - the opportunity to ask questions and get answers in real time, according to the vendor. The data will be available on-demand on a range of mobile devices, with risk metrics specifically tailored to each user's needs.

RMS (one)'s functionality is made possible by a proprietary analytical operating system (RMS AoS) and a runtime environment built for the global insurance industry, the RMS Cloud. RMS AoS enables real-time interrogation of customers' large-scale exposure and model results, the vendor says. The RMS Cloud provides the reliable big compute and big data infrastructure in a manner that preserves privacy and secure segregation of customer data. This is all done on a single transparent, flexible platform in an efficient, secure and auditable way.

As an exposure and risk management environment, RMS (one) will enable RMS to release far more powerful catastrophe models, among other key benefits, according to Hemant Shah, co-founder and CEO of RMS. "As modelers we've been living with many constraints in terms of architectural design of modeling engines and how they are delivered in client environments," Shah relates. "In R&D we build very powerful models, but to deliver them to clients we have to make tradeoffs to implement in executable software that fits."

RMS (one)'s open model environment will enable clients to take control of key assumptions within models, whether those are RMS models, proprietary models or third-party models, according to Shah. "We're not just delivering RMS models but enabling clients to implement their own views of risks using our models," he elaborates. "They won't be limited to our models or how we've expressed our models."

RMS (one) will also dramatically increase the speed and efficiency of the exposure and risk management workflow for clients, Shah asserts. "Model runs that previously took hours to complete can now be completed in minutes, and analytical work two weeks to two hours," Shah says. "These are dramatic improvements that will enable insurers and reinsurers to fundamentally rethink workflow and attain business benefits previously beyond their reach."

Another major benefit of RMS (one) is the way it will enable carriers to directly empower front-line decision makers, according to Shah. "Today it's a very back-office, asynchronous set of work taking place among relatively small group of specialists working apart from decision makers," Shah comments. "And it gives them the decision support they need in real time."

[Looks like the models were right after all]

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio