Karen Clark & Company Launches Independent Reviews of Catastrophe Risk Management Processes

Boston, MA – November 5, 2007

Karen Clark & Company announced today it is providing comprehensive reviews of company internal catastrophe risk assessment and management processes. The independent reviews are designed to help companies ensure they have in place holistic risk management processes that comply with best practices. Holistic risk management practices incorporate independent benchmarks and metrics to assess the quality of catastrophe model input and output.

Karen Clark & Company independent reviews cover the five most important components of an effective risk management process—preparing the exposure data, benchmarking the exposure data, performing the model analyses, benchmarking the model-generated loss estimates, and applying the model results. The comprehensive independent review, called IMARC®, Independent Metrics for the Assessment of Risk from Catastrophes, provides company management with an assessment of each component of their internal process along with recommendations for improvements.

"In meetings with dozens of companies over the past several months, I found incredible demand for a recognized, independent review process. Even companies that have already developed extensive internal processes want a team of independent experts to review those processes," said Karen Clark, CEO of Karen Clark & Company. "The IMARC reviews also provide a way for external stakeholders such as rating agencies and investors to better differentiate companies based on the relative quality of their risk management processes and their exposure data."