Karen Clark & Company President and CEO Honored as Innovator in Risk Management

Boston, MA – October 6, 2008

Karen Clark & Company, independent experts in catastrophe risk, catastrophe models, and catastrophe risk management, today announced that Karen Clark, President and CEO, has received the Risk Innovator™ Award in the Insurance category from Risk & Insurance®. The Risk & Insurance® Risk Innovator™ Award recognizes winners in 13 industries who have, in the past year, demonstrated innovation and excellence in risk management.

According to the article in Risk & Insurance® announcing the award, Ms. Clark has proven herself over the last quarter century "to be among the insurance industry’s greatest Risk Innovators." The article goes on to say that Ms. Clark "is as known for her integrity as she is for her innovations. She launched her own company to address the two major challenges she discovered after Hurricane Katrina."

"I am honored to be recognized among the top leaders in risk management," said Ms. Clark. "Innovation has been a driving force in the insurance sector, particularly over the past several years. With so many new tools and technologies, it is vital that insurance companies apply them in a way that conforms to best practices. In founding Karen Clark & Company, my goal is to help insurance executives understand and utilize catastrophe risk management technology to their fullest advantage."

The award is a tribute to Ms. Clark’s pioneering role in the field of catastrophe risk management. In 1987, she created the first hurricane catastrophe model and founded the first catastrophe modeling company, Applied Insurance Research (AIR), now AIR Worldwide. At AIR, Ms. Clark developed the probabilistic catastrophe modeling techniques that revolutionized the way insurers, reinsurers and financial institutions manage their catastrophe risk. When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, the aftermath exposed a number of challenges in the insurance sector, namely a lack of high-quality data on insured properties and an overreliance on catastrophe model output. Ms. Clark launched Karen Clark & Company in 2007 to help companies collect better data and to better use catastrophe models as sophisticated tools for making important risk management decisions.

The Risk Innovator™ Award is one of many recognitions Ms. Clark has received. Earlier this month, she was named the most influential woman in reinsurance by Global Reinsurance, and in May 2008, she received an award certificate for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize bestowed on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Last year, The Review Worldwide Reinsurance Awards presented Ms. Clark with the Lifetime Achievement Award for her outstanding long-term contribution to the re/insurance industry. Ms. Clark has also been selected by Business Insurance as a "Woman to Watch," and in 2001 she was named "Woman of the Year" by the Association of Professional Insurance Women (APIW).

About Risk Innovator

The Risk & Insurance® Risk Innovator™ Award recognizes winners in 13 different industries who have, in the past year, demonstrated innovation and excellence in risk management. These key individuals see risk differently and have resolved risk-related problems in a unique or innovative way. They view risk not only as a threat, but also as an opportunity for their organizations.