The Department of the Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office and the National Science Foundation have partnered to form a new research center that will provide research, thought leadership and analysis support to help the insurance sector enhance its insurance risk modeling and underwriting related to terrorism and cybersecurity risks.
The newly established Industry-University Cooperative Research Center, or IUCRC, will consist of stakeholders from the federal government, insurance sector and academia to help improve the U.S. financial system’s resilience through several efforts, the Treasury said Friday.
Efforts include helping insurers estimate risk to improve insurance coverage, pricing and policyholder uptake, contributing to the expansion of capital markets and reinsurance and informing the treatment of catastrophic cyber risks and terrorism in government programs.
Under IUCRC, university faculty and students will work with an industry consortium to perform research focused on the insurance sector’s needs.
The Treasury and NSF released a request for research proposals to provide research analysis and thought leadership on terrorism and catastrophic cyber risk modeling and underwriting.
According to a letter issued by NSF on Wednesday, the partnership expects research efforts that will stem from the new center to result in the development of best practices and tools, assessment of policy reforms that could provide governments, insurers and other stakeholders with new data and creation of improved underwriting and modeling tools, practices and methodologies.
