RMS and Aon Benfield Announce New Long-term Relationship

Newark, CA and Chicago, IL – June 17, 2009 – Risk Management Solutions (RMS) and Aon Benfield have announced a new long-term relationship whereby Aon Benfield endorses RMS as its lead catastrophe modeler. “This relationship validates the importance of the risk insight from RMS to our clients and the need to increase the efficiencies we require to transact business between our clients and markets. Selecting RMS as our lead modeler affirms our strategy of employing robust, market-leading products to bring valuable insight, calibrated reinsurance tools, and further modeling efficiencies to our clients," commented Bryon Ehrhart, CEO of Aon Benfield Analytics.

Through this relationship, Aon Benfield will further deepen its understanding of RMS models to add more value to its clients’ understanding of catastrophe risk analytics and interpretation of results. The two companies will also investigate the applications of industry exposure and loss data which will allow RMS to further improve its ability to build and calibrate its models. Aon Benfield and RMS are committed to exploring other areas of joint interest as well, including increasing the efficiency and transparency of catastrophe-linked capital markets transactions.

“We look forward to this relationship with RMS,” said Dan Dick, executive vice president and head of catastrophe management at Aon Benfield. “Aon Benfield does, however, remain a multi-model shop, and will continue to provide its clients with multiple views of risk.” Similarly, RMS remains committed to all of its relationships with major brokers and intermediaries.

Andrew Appel, CEO of Aon Benfield said: “Over the past decade, modeling has become a central component of our service offering to clients. In order to effectively analyze complex risk portfolios, an intermediary needs to have the very highest level of modeling capabilities at its disposal and a team of professionals to interpret and tailor this to its clients’ specific policies. Our partnership with RMS ensures we will be at the forefront of the industry in providing value to clients.”

Hemant Shah, president and CEO of RMS, commented: “Now, more than ever, transparency is crucial for the effective interpretation and application of risk models. We applaud Aon Benfield’s decision to make RMS models a priority, and in doing so, improve their clients’ and the market’s ability to make informed, model-based decisions.”