When storms and natural catastrophes strike, insurers need tools to help them stay in control, be one step ahead and guide their risk management processes.

Aon's Impact Forecasting division has delivered on these needs with its Automated Event Response (AER) service which allows risk managers to have early estimates of projected losses for European windstorms and US hurricanes.

The service helps clients understand which locations will be affected by storms, helping to prioritise claims operations and providing real-time information to decision makers, stakeholders and customers.

The tool is fully automated and results are provided within an hour, compared to half a day for traditional real-time event modelling approaches.

Aon says another major differentiator is that Impact Forecasting's loss projections are based on actual event forecast parameters rather than existing stochastic evets.

Over the last 12 months, Impact Forecasting has expanded coverage of the service to more than 100 clients, delivering automated loss projections for major windstorms in Europe, as well as a busy hurricane season in the US.

In 2021, Impact Forecasting will also expand the service for Japanese typhoons.

InsuranceERM's judging panel were highly impressed with the AER service saying a real-time automated response to events is important for risk managers and claims handlers.

Jakub Aska, business development executive at Impact Forecasting, says its approach to catastrophe risk solutions is based on being open and transparent and listening to clients' needs.

Aska says: "Apart from AER, we are developing new models as well as updating the existing ones, to make sure we are following the latest science, and we're also constantly enhancing our catastrophe modelling platform ELEMENTS."