In the latest episode of the Risky Science Podcast, Dr. Victor Gensini, Professor at Northern Illinois University and expert on severe convective storms, discusses how these weather events are fundamentally reshaping insurance risk assessment and catastrophe modeling.
Dr. Gensini explains how the industry has undergone a dramatic shift in understanding severe convective storms—hail, tornadoes, and damaging winds—over the past decade.
Convective storms were always treated as kind of a secondary peril. These were things that aggregated up over time. They never accounted for losses that we would see relative to something like hurricanes. Now, what you're seeing is that a majority of the losses on any given portfolio are actually being driven by convective storms.
But this shift has revealed a fundamental problem with how the insurance industry measures risk. Current catastrophe models are built on historical data that dramatically underestimates the frequency and impact of these events.
It's not a matter of setting it up as a one in one hundred year event, or one in one thousand year event. It's happening every single year for the past 10 years. I mean, something is not right with the underlying appreciation of the risk when it comes to these events.
The root of this modeling crisis lies in data quality. Unlike hurricanes, which are well-tracked and understood, severe convective storms operate on much smaller spatial and temporal scales, making them inherently harder to catalog and predict. Historical records are biased toward populated areas and rely on human reporting, creating significant gaps in understanding true risk exposure.
Historical data is not a good proxy for what's happening right now. It's a gross underestimation of the total risk. Changing weather and climate patterns are helping to actually augment or move these events in areas where they weren't happening before.
Dr. Gensini believes the industry is still 5-10 years away from having reliable catastrophe models for severe convective storms comparable to those used for hurricanes. The solution requires better data collection through remote sensing, field campaigns, and academic-industry partnerships like his newly established Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Convective Storms.
The stakes are real: Illinois State Farm policyholders recently saw premiums nearly double, primarily due to convective storm losses. As Dr. Gensini warns, without better models and transparent communication, the industry faces a "reckoning moment" with regulators and policyholders.
📺 Listen to the full episode here
Show Notes
🔬 Guest
- Dr. Victor Gensini - Northern Illinois University
- Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Convective Storms
- Insurance Information Institute - Non-resident Scholar Fellow
📊 Topics
- Wildfires and severe thunderstorms in the US drive global insured losses to USD 80 billion in first half of 2025, Swiss Re Institute estimates - Swiss Re
- Navigating the Storm: Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short Against Severe Convective Storms, KatRisk
- Developing Rates for the Severe Convective Storm Peril in Property Insurance, Casualty Actuarial Society
