What's new in Touchstone 2023 (11.0)

Summary of new features and updates in Touchstone 2023 (11.0).

Important: We strongly recommend that all Touchstone and Touchstone Re users read the product release notes. The release notes are available on the release documentation landing page for each product.

Information specific to this release is summarized on the Touchstone 2023 (11.0) Release Documentation page on the Client Portal. For related information, also on the portal, see Hot Fixes and Services Packs on https://www.air-worldwide.com/client-support/Hot-Fixes/; the content is periodically updated. To sign up for Touchstone notifications follow this path: Client Portal > Profile > My Profile > Manage Subscriptions > Client-Confidential Content > Documentation and Software Downloads

Touchstone 2023 (11.0) includes enhancements to Verisk models and the user interface, data updates, and more. This release also includes a technical preview of the new Next Generation Models (NGM) framework.

This release provides parity with the previous version for: import and export of projects, public APIs, offshore financial terms (CSL), event intensity (category filters), ALERT support, min/max deductibles for layer and sublimits in Geospatial analyses, marginal impact, dynamic hazard / LLEI, FUWLA mode, loss grouping, loss modification, CAT XOL, custom models, and workers' compensation models (terror and earthquake).
Note: This release does not support dynamic hazard / LLEI for previous model versions.

Model updates

This section summarizes the model updates, including the following items. See the release notes for a list of model updates by version:
  • Availability of all Verisk models for the extended NGM Technical Preview.
  • Expanded list of models supporting marine damage functions.
  • For the new Verisk Earthquake Model for the Middle East, support for country-specific import of exposure data with supported data resolutions for geocoding or reverse geocoding for: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Omar, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. Support for use of the data in related Touchstone analyses and for appropriate CLF/CLA mappings for export to Touchstone Re.
    Note: The Verisk Earthquake Model for the Middle East will be available in Touchstone in January 2024. We are providing you with CRESTA/area, subarea, construction, occupancy, and peril codes now for the eight countries that the model will support. This will enable you to start importing and verifying the exposure data for these countries. The supported countries are: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE).
  • Support for secondary uncertainty distributions, for select models, for damage functions that reflect our most current view of secondary uncertainty.
  • Support for new distributions for all property and workers' compensation models.
  • Support for the secondary peril framework for select models, allowing more accurate coding of location-level terms by peril or sub-peril.
  • Previous model support.
  • Verisk Severe Thunderstorm Model for the United States
    Important: Peril codes are different in Geospatial analysis than they are in Detailed Loss analysis. We do not support the new sub-peril set code for the Verisk Severe Thunderstorm Model for the United States, which is 11534336. Instead, we are still using the old sub-peril code, which is 2. This mismatch creates an issue when a user tries to join detailed loss results with geospatial analysis accumulation output.

Other enhancements

  • We updated the demand surge model to include a European region with a new methodology (country-specific and accounts for the whole year instead of for each event individually). See Customize demand surge. We created a standalone tool that allows users to see related demand surge factors applied to the loss if the loss was large enough for that model/country to trigger demand surge based on model requirements from the Verisk research team.
    Note:

    The ALERT event sets are not supported for the new demand surge model for the European models.

    You can run the new demand surge tool in FUWLA mode for the Verisk Earthquake Model for the Pan-European Region and Verisk Extratropical Cyclone Model for Europe.

  • The ALERT enhancements enable clients to use the new financial engine with all existing ALERT functionality. You can run more complex policies, accumulate losses with correlations, save losses by new perspectives, and save losses by sub-peril. In addition, you can now import ALERT event sets directly into Touchstone from the ALERT section of the Touchstone home page.

  • This release supports CLA (company loss association) for all models, perils, and catalog sizes. It also supports CLA in CAT XOL and loss group exports.
    Important: CLF (company loss file) export is not supported in this release.

  • Touchstone supports configuration of marginal impact, loss group analyses, and loss modifications by sub-peril.

  • We removed the following features from the Touchstone user interface and from APIs because this release only supports the NGM engine.

    • Next Generation Models slider (New Detailed Loss Analysis > Analysis Settings pane)

    • Correlation and Uncertainty (Administration Console/New Detailed Loss Analysis > Analysis Settings pane)

    • Apply location terms for residential contracts (New Detailed Loss Analysis > Analysis Settings pane and New Geospatial Analysis > Step 3 Modify Settings and Reinsurance > Select Values to Analyze). Deductibles are processed before limits in NGM.

    • Min-Max Deductible (Administration Console/New Detailed Loss Analysis > Analysis Settings pane). By default NGM uses a new min/max algorithm.
      Note: In previous releases, this field allowed users to choose the Former or Revised option. In this release we updated the logic in cases where you have a layer-level min/max deductible and a sublimit that also contains a deductible; previously, the algorithm ignored that sublimit deductible. NGM now calculates the loss when applying the sublimit deductible as well as when calculating the layer min/max and location deductibles. The algorithm looks at three options: whether to apply the layer, sublimit, or location min/max deductible: it applies the deductibles at only one level of exposure.

    • Standard EP and Secondary EP buttons in EP Type area (loss results grid)

  • We added the following feature to the Touchstone user interface to accommodate NGM.

    • Additional Details > Sub-Peril (New Detailed Loss Analysis > Output Options pane. See Output Options pane.

  • Risk Management reports no longer include information about features removed from the release, such as correlation, application of residential location terms, and the ability to save output by location- or layer-level facultative reinsurance.
  • We added features to our loss analysis APIs to accommodate NGM. The new loss engine takes into account a wide spectrum of loss modification factors, uncertainties, sub-perils, damage ratios, and primary and secondary triggers for modeling risks and estimating loss impacts.

  • Improved accuracy of step functions modeling enables you to accurately model step functions that have Trigger Type 4 (Building, then Contents) policy terms. See Step functions.

  • All loss perspectives are now available.

  • All Touchstone Reinsurance functions are available in this release.

  • Updates to the Loss Analysis template, Administration Console > Object Management, reflect the same changes made to the analysis settings and output functions for a new detailed loss analysis.

  • We expanded the number of user-defined fields (UDFs) in the Loss Modification template from one to five. Previously, the template supported only Location UDF #1; we extended the support to Location UDF #2 through Location UDF #5. This enhancement is useful when a user wants to define rules for various user-assigned categorizations for a given location.

  • This release supports the application of multiple loss modification templates in a single request, enabling users to launch separate analyses for each of the templates.

  • For layers, sublimits, and layers with sublimits in geospatial analyses, we implemented the NGM logic for the following deductible types. This logic, which we had already implemented for loss analysis, provides you with a more accurate view of your geospatial analysis results.

    • Minimum Deductible Amount
    • Maximum Deductible Amount
    • Minimum and Maximum
  • We improved NGM logs to ensure that they provide useful information to users in an intuitive way. Improvements include, but are not limited to, information about database access issues, inclusion of the remapping of unknown construction / occupancy codes in a new remap log, adding a banner that indicates when the product uses custom catalogs, and displaying the number of disaggregated locations.
  • In the Exposure Summary dashboard, we updated the GeoMatchLevelCode distribution widget to include a separate count of locations with GeoMatchLevelCode = Null. Therefore, the sum total of all the GeoMatchLevelCode value counts in the distribution equals the total number of locations imported. We also updated the GeoMatchLevelCode column in the Exposure View filter to include NULL in the list of selection values; users can now include or exclude locations where the GeoMatchLevelCode value is NULL.
  • Touchstone supports the import, storage, and filtering of Verisk Building Identification Numbering System (BINS) IDs into Touchstone exposure location data via CSV files. You can import up to four BINS IDs per exposure locations. This feature allows insurers and reinsurers to identify whether an address represents a building, a unit in a building, a site, or a campus. You can display and use the data in exposure views, contract lists, location lists, and all associated filters. You can also create geocode match mapping sets to map the BINS geocodes to Touchstone geomatch levels (Administration Console > Object Management > User Geocode Match Mapping Set). We added Verisk BINS to tGeocoderCode.
  • Clients can now import and export administrative boundaries that were created for regions, countries, and other types of administrative boundaries. This enhancement makes it easier to create and update increasingly large and complex administrative boundaries across multiple business units and the Touchstone environments. They can use these boundaries in both Loss Modification and Marginal Impact Boundary Peril templates.
  • Clients can now import and export Marginal Impact Boundary Peril templates.
  • In the Zone Set Manager for detailed loss, available in the Administration Console, new filtering options enable you to more easily create or update zones for loss analysis in Touchstone. When creating a zone, you can specify whether the zone is needed for aggregate loss (Touchstone Re) or detailed loss (Touchstone).