WTW and the University of Exeter have agreed to continue their work together in advancing understanding of European windstorm risk.

Now approaching its 20th year, the collaboration is entering a new phase focused on how climate variability influences storms, and how this knowledge can support better re/insurance decisions.

Windstorms are one of the costliest natural perils in Europe, with large year-to-year swings in damage and resulting insurance claims. Recent seasons have challenged long-held assumptions about when and where major impacts occur. Despite this, many risk models still rely heavily on short historical records or distant long-term projections, leaving a gap in understanding the full range of plausible extremes in the near term.

The WTW-Exeter partnership now aims to close that gap by addressing a key challenge: what can be said with confidence about the next five to ten years?

“We’re excited to mark 20 years of impactful collaboration with the University of Exeter,” said Dr Daniel Bannister, weather and climate risks research lead at WTW. “For almost two decades, our work together has helped shape how the re/insurance industry understands windstorm risk. The focus now is on what the climate will bring over the next five to ten years and how we can use emerging signals to help our clients make better-informed decisions.”

University of Exeter researchers, led by professor David Stephenson, developed one of the first statistical models to simulate storm clustering, a key advancement for catastrophe model benchmarking.

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