Moody’s RMS™ North Atlantic Hurricane and North America Earthquake Models are foundational in supporting the world’s largest natural perils and insured risk exposure, representing a sizable segment of the overall ~US$2 trillion property and casualty (P&C) direct written premium market.
At the Exceedance 2026 conference (June 1-4, 2026) in Fort Lauderdale, we made a major announcement: the strategic migration of these flagship models to the high-definition (HD) framework. We believe this transition represents a transformative milestone for the industry.
Enhancing market stability and resilience across the US, the new models will:
- Set a new standard for hurricane risk modeling: Representing the most significant rebuild in over 15 years, every component of the Moody’s RMS North Atlantic Hurricane HD Model will be enhanced. The new Moody’s US Hurricane HD Models and the new version of the US Inland Flood HD Model will use the same event set, with 100k of simulations, to provide integrated solutions for wind, surge, and tropical cyclone flood.
- Advance earthquake science in North America: The rebuild of the Moody’s RMS North America Earthquake Model into the HD framework includes implementing the new United States Geological Survey (USGS) 2023 National Hazard Map, along with enhancements to its model components for risk applications. The new HD model incorporates the latest scientific data and engineering research and uses comprehensive event sets that account for hazard uncertainty and correlation, enabling insurers to estimate losses more accurately. This ensures a robust representation of tail events required for risk assessment and effective risk selection for account underwriting and portfolio management, enabling informed decisions at a granular level.
- Build a more unified view of overall peril risk in the US Market: After the successful release of the Moody’s RMS US Severe Convective Storm and Wildfire HD Models, Moody’s continues to advance its vision by providing a comprehensive view of risk across all perils. Building the North Atlantic Hurricane and North America Earthquake Models within the HD model frameworks enables deeper, seamless insights into risk drivers, correlations, and uncertainties, fostering better evaluation of earnings risk, capital adequacy, and overall portfolio management.
To help clients benefit from these innovations, Moody’s Intelligent Risk Platform™ has matured into a globally trusted, enterprise-grade risk analytics platform, well-positioned to get the most from these models. The platform now models billions of risks per month in production environments across every insurance market. For HD modeling overall, we're seeing rapid HD model adoption across the most material perils, and the momentum is accelerating.
With North America earthquakes and North Atlantic hurricanes being the largest insured risks globally and demanding the largest capital support, our continuous, progressive innovation helps ensure our modeling science remains relevant and important for the market, enabling more efficient deployment of risk capital for these perils.
For more details on these two new HD models, Jeff Waters takes you through the key developments in his blog here.