About | Perils

PERILS aims to improve the availability of insurance market data relating to natural catastrophes to help enhance the industry’s understanding of such risks as well as to facilitate risk transfer based on industry loss indices.

PERILS provides independent industry benchmark data on natural catastrophe insurance risk through its PERILS CORE and PERILS EXTENDED products. For PERILS CORE, industry data are based on information received from insurance companies writing business in the territories covered by PERILS CORE. The data are quality controlled, anonymized, aggregated and extrapolated to industry (market) level. For PERILS EXTENDED, PERILS derives country-level industry loss estimates from a combination of public and non-public sources. All resulting benchmark datasets are made available to interested parties via subscription.

PERILS CORE offers industry exposure and event loss data, as well as an associated industry loss index service, for natural catastrophes in Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan, New Zealand and Turkey. The Canadian data are produced by PERILS’ subsidiary CatIQ. PERILS CORE also provides industry exposure data for Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. PERILS EXTENDED complements PERILS CORE by providing country-level natural catastrophe industry loss data for Property and Motor Hull in countries not covered by PERILS CORE (excluding the US), once predefined reporting thresholds are exceeded.

PERILS AG was incorporated in January 2009 in Zurich, Switzerland as a joint stock company. The company registration number is CH-020.3.033.447-4.
The principal office of PERILS is located in Zurich, Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. The original concept for PERILS was tabled during a series of discussions at the Chief Risk Officer Forum (www.thecroforum.org).

Shareholders of PERILS AG include: Allianz SE, AXA, Assicurazioni Generali, Groupama, Guy Carpenter, Insurance Australia Group, Munich Re, Partner Re, Swiss Re, and Zurich Insurance Group. Each shareholder holds equal equity.

In June 2019, PERILS acquired the Canadian loss and exposure aggregation firm Catastrophe Indices & Quantification Inc. (CatIQ), having an office in Toronto, Canada.

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Our offices

PERILS is active around the world. We have offices in Zurich, Sydney and Toronto.

Figures & Facts

> 71 %

PERILS overall market coverage as measured in percentage of property premium exceeds 71%

PERILS covers 21 countries: AU, AT, BE, CA, CH, DE, DK, FR, ID, IE, IT, JP, LU, NL, NO, NZ, PH, SE, TH, TR, UK

PERILS covers 7 perils: earthquake, extratropical windstorm, fire, flood, hail/convective storm, tropical cyclone, volcanic eruption

Since 1 January 2010, PERILS has released 16 updates of its industry exposure databases

183

Per 30 September 2025, PERILS has captured 183 events in the PERILS loss database

> 580

Since 1 January 2010, more than 580 PERILS-based transactions have been placed

Per September 2025, 83 PERILS-based transactions were at risk

>USD 25 bn

Since 1 January 2010, a total of more than USD 25bn of PERILS-based capacity has been placed

USD 2.6 bn

Per 30 September 2025, more than USD 2.6bn of PERILS-based capacity was at risk

Our Mandate

PERILS is an independent organization providing high-quality data relevant to the insurance industry with the aim of increasing the understanding of insured risk and to facilitate risk transfer.

We make every effort to achieve the highest standards in both our products and services, and are committed to product innovation to ensure that PERILS is continually adding value to the global insurance industry.

Target Clients

PERILS’ products support a wide range of portfolio and risk management functions including:

measuring a company’s exposure or event loss data against the PERILS industry benchmark
assessing the risk of industry loss-based transactions
designing adequate insurance, reinsurance, retrocession, or capital markets protections
designing custom-made coverage triggers to minimize the basis risk of ILS or ILW protections
forecasting of losses from European, Japanese and Australian windstorm events and from Australian hail events

Board of Directors

Sibylle Steimen, Chairwoman

Marc Bagarry, Director

Ewoud Bom, Director

Christopher Boss, Director

Stefan Decker, Director

Christof Grass, Director

Nick Hartry, Director

Christoph Oehy, Director

Luca Varesano, Director

Team

Christoph Oehy

CEO

Christoph Oehy has more than 20 years of international property and casualty underwriting experience. Starting his career at Swiss Re as flood risk sp...ecialist, he has held several senior roles, including managing Swiss Re’s natural catastrophe portfolio, leading the Treaty Property & Casualty underwriting for Canada and English Caribbean and leading Facultative Property for several European countries. He holds a Master’s degree and PhD in Civil Engineering as well as an Executive MBA.

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Georg Andrea

Data Management

Georg Andrea has more than 25 years of professional experience in the reinsurance industry. Georg’s areas of expertise are underwriting, enterprise ex...posure management and probabilistic Nat Cat model development. Prior to joining PERILS he worked for Partner Re heading the exposure control team and from 1999 to 2005 he was responsible for the development of Partner Re’s proprietary earthquake risk analysis tool. In this role he assisted in pricing and designing parametric EQ covers. Georg holds an M.sc in geophysics from ETH Zürich where he specialized in seismology.

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Dalida Bachmann

Client Relationship

Dalida has more than 15 years of experience in the reinsurance industry. She worked as a contract analyst at Partner Re and later as a treaty underwri...ter at Glacier Re. Prior to joining PERILS, Dalida was a treaty underwriter at Credit Suisse’s insurance linked strategies business and at Bernina Re. She holds a Master’s degree in business administration.

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Maurus Feyen

Product Development

Maurus Feyen joined our team in March 2024, marking the beginning of his career in the reinsurance industry. He holds a Master's degree in Geography, ...his thesis investigated the biodiversity of grasslands using remote sensing techniques. At PERILS, Maurus works on product development with a focus on geospatial data and data analytics.

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Caroline Floyd

Director, CatIQ

With a background in atmospheric science and meteorology, Caroline has worked in Canada and the United States as a forecaster and weather expert, trac...king everything from landfalling hurricanes to ice storms and even radioactive fallout. She’s been a lead forecaster for coverage of two Olympic Games and The World Cup finals, producing hourly forecasts for every continent (excluding Antarctica – so far). After nearly 20 years of being one of the ‘they’ in “They say it’s going to rain”, Caroline joined CatIQ as Assistant Director in early 2020 and has been promoted to Director on 1st July 2022.

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Takashi Goda

Japan Representative

Takashi Goda is a highly experienced insurance executive with an industry experience of some 30 years including at Swiss Re and in the broking industr...y. Throughout his career he has held various senior positions in Japan, Europe and Asia, and was previously Head of Japan for Swiss Re and a Member of the Asia Management Team until his retirement in 2014. He then joined PERILS in 2019 with a passion to establish its footprint in Japan, one of the most important natural catastrophe markets.

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Luzi Hitz

Product Manager

Luzi Hitz has more than 30 years of experience in the reinsurance industry. He has held various risk management and underwriting positions at Swiss Re..., Glacier Re and Asia Capital Re. Until October 2023 he served as the CEO of PERILS. Throughout his career, Luzi has been involved in natural catastrophe risk assessment and Cat risk management and has authored numerous papers and speeches about the subject. He holds a Master’s degree in geology and a PhD in geophysics.

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Beena Makhijani

Operations

Beena Makhijani started her career in the reinsurance industry more than 20 years ago as a Technical Accountant for P&C and L&H at Swiss Re. After wor...king as a Business Analyst in Partner Re’s Nat CAT Operations, she has been instrumental in setting up the systems and framework of Qatar Re where she has been employed as a Senior Technical Accountant and as a Property Cat Technician. She studied at the University of Applied Sciences (HWV) in Winterthur and holds a Bachelor in Banking and Finance.

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Darryl Pidcock

Head of PERILS Asia-Pacific & Cyber

Darryl Pidcock has more than 25 years of experience in the financial sector. Darryl joined PERILS in 2017 responsible for the Asia Pacific region. Sin...ce joining, Darryls’ responsibilities have expanded to include Head of Cyber and insurance-linked securities transactions where PERILS is used as a reporting agent. Prior to PERILS, Darryl worked for 18 years in various roles with Swiss Re across the Asia Pacific region including Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea, China and Singapore. Darryl has Master’s degrees in finance & accounting.

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Matthias Sänger

Product Management

Matthias Sänger has more than 20 years of experience in the weather business and reinsurance industry. He has held various positions as Cat modeller a...nd risk analyst at PartnerRe, Axis Re, Twelve Capital and Zimmerberg Risk Analytics. He joined PERILS in 2024. Before he was a consultant to PERILS for five years and has been heavily involved in the development of the CRESTA application and of the CLIX loss index. He holds a Master’s degree in geography and atmospheric physics. At PERILS, Matthias works as a product manager.

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Tomihiro Segawa

Senior Advisor

Tomihiro Segawa has over 40 years of experience in the reinsurance industry and is a recognised and well connected practitioner worldwide. He has held... various client management, underwriting and senior leadership positions at Swiss Re, Tokio Millennium Re and RenaissanceRe, before retiring in March 2022. As Senior Advisor at PERILS, he provides valuable contribution in the further development of natural catastrophe risk assessment and management worldwide.

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Rolf Staub

General Counsel

Rolf Staub has more than 30 years of experience working as an attorney in the reinsurance industry. He has held various executive jobs working amongst... others for Allianz Risk Transfer and Zurich Insurance where he served as General Counsel for Group Insurance and Group Reinsurance. Rolf holds a Master’s degree in law and is a qualified Swiss attorney.
For several years, Rolf has been the Chairman of the Swiss Chapter of the Insurance Law Industry Association “AIDA”. He currently lectures in reinsurance law at the Zurich University LLM program and serves as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the F+F School of Art and Design, in Zurich.

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Laura Twidle

CEO, CatIQ

Laura has been a professional meteorologist for over 7 years, and she specializes in forecasting catastrophic events and providing decision-makers wit...h proper information and tools. Laura analyzes insurance loss and exposure data and has designed and managed the development of several projects at CatIQ. For several years, she has also had a role on the steering committee for the annual Canadian catastrophe conference. Laura was previously the Managing Director at CatIQ before becoming CEO on July 1, 2022. Laura holds a BSc. in meteorology and mathematics, and an MSc. in atmospheric and oceanic sciences, with a focus on extreme precipitation events.

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Catherine Weber

Finances and HR

Catherine Weber has more than 25 years of professional experience in the reinsurance industry. Catherine has worked for Swiss Re as a property underwr...iter, client relationship manager and communication manager both in Zurich and in Paris. She holds a diploma of the Business School EAD (École d’Administration et de Direction des Affaires, Paris).

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Lukas Wissler

Product Management

Lukas Wissler has been involved in underwriting, pricing and modelling of traditional and non-traditional reinsurance products for more than 20 years.... He gained his first experience in natural perils reinsurance as an underwriter in PartnerRe's catastrophe unit. From 2009 he was instrumental in setting up Novae Re and Qatar Re, for which he developed the international property cat portfolios. Lukas studied geology and did his PhD on global climate change in earth’s history.

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