Tech to help close climate protection gap

Aon has announced a partnership agreement with Catalyst Technologies, helping to strengthen the response to weather climate risk in Australia. The tech firm’s threat intelligence and critical event management platform - iluminr - provides early warning alerts for emerging climate-related threats. 

“Organisations are currently grappling with the compounding effects of increasing physical climate risks, and a retreating insurance market – leaving a much greater exposure on their balance sheet each year,” said Catalyst Technologies co-founder & chief growth officer Marcus Vaughan.

”By adopting technology, these organisations are able to increase their threat awareness, and improve their crisis response time and effectiveness. By getting ahead of extreme weather events, organisations can directly reduce the impact and improve recovery timeframes.”  

Severe weather events are the most common (and costliest) drivers of property damage in Australia with severe thunderstorms and hail being the costliest natural peril costing the local insurance market close to $1 billion each year. 

In 2020, four severe weather events contributed the great majority of Australia’s insured loss total of AUD $4.5 billion. 

According to Jennifer Richards, managing director – Specialties at Aon: “Australia’s built environment is heavily exposed to a wide variety of extreme weather perils. Our common goal is to ensure that all Australian businesses remain prepared for and able to respond to severe weather events and build resilience to be better prepared for future events.”