What's New in Touchstone 8.0

Information specific to this release is summarized on the Touchstone 8.0 Release Documentation page on the AIR Client Portal. For related information, also on the portal, see the Hot Fixes and Touchstone Known Issues pages, both of which are periodically updated. To sign up for Touchstone notifications follow this path: AIR Client Portal > Profile > My Profile > Manage Subscriptions > Client-Confidential Content > Documentation and Software Downloads

Touchstone 2020 (8.0) includes enhancements to AIR models, Model Builder, Geospatial Analytics, and Reinsurance programs. It also includes a new Modify Peril feature, a new Premium International Geocoding feature, and support for user-supplied geocode match level mapping sets, among other features.

Models

The Scope of Model and Software Updates, available on the AIR Client Portal, provides high-level information about model updates and updates to the AIR Industry Exposure Database. You may also find the Update to Touchstone Loss Estimates version 8.0 Technical Update, available on the portal, helpful in understanding the effect of model changes on loss estimates.

  • Updated 2020 models include:

    • AIR Inland Flood Model for the United States

    • AIR Hurricane Model for the United States

    • AIR U.S. Hurricane Model for Offshore Assets

    • AIR Wildfire Model for the United States

    • AIR Earthquake Model for Australia

    • AIR Earthquake Model for the Caribbean

    • AIR Tropical Cyclone Model for the Caribbean

    • AIR Typhoon Model for Mainland China

  • Previous Model Version support: The 2020 release of Touchstone includes the previous versions of all models being updated this year, including AIR Hurricane Model for the United States, AIR Inland Flood Model for the United States, AIR Tropical Cyclone Model for the Caribbean, AIR Earthquake Model for the Caribbean, and AIR Earthquake Model for Australia. The previous model version of the models will be run based on the latest geography updates and financial module changes, which could cause loss differences between Touchstone 7.0 and 8.0. The previous model versions are labeled as “Archive” in the event set name.

  • This release supports local intensity event calculations for the Precipitation Depth sub-perils of the Tropical Cyclone perils for the AIR Hurricane Model for the United States and the AIR Typhoon Model for Japan.

  • This release includes updates to the AIR Industry Exposure Database.

Premium International Geocoding

  • Premium international geocoding is a new, optional, licensed feature available in the Touchstone 2020 (8.0) release. The feature can enable the seamless integration of high-resolution geocoding in Touchstone. It can provide address-specific (address point), street address interpolation, or street centroid resolution geocoding for over 140 modeled or non-modeled countries. Users can control which locations are not sent to the premium geocodes by country or by line of business. For detailed information, refer to Using Geocoding in Touchstone, which is available on the AIR Client Portal. Available geocoding resolutions include:

    • Address point geocoding, rooftop or parcel-level, for at least 26 countries.

    • Street address interpolation geocoding, which derive the estimated geocode location using street segment interpolation, for about 90 countries.

    • Street centroid geocoding for about 36 additional countries.

    Note:

    The premium geocodes obtained by licensing this feature are restricted for use only within Touchstone and cannot be used outside of Touchstone. These are identified by the GeocoderCode = 'Syncsort' column in the AIRReference database and in the AIRExposure and AIRResult database (or renamed versions of the exposure and results databases). For the export feature, these premium geocodes are either encrypted or removed during export to comply with these contractual restrictions. Direct extracts of premium geocodes from the Touchstone databases are also contractually prohibited.

Custom Vulnerability

The Model Builder tool now allows users to customize AIR models with their own custom damage functions. After the custom damage functions have been successfully validated for formatting and data correctness—for example, you cannot have alphanumeric values for a mean damage ratio—they become immediately available for use within the Touchstone Detailed Loss Analysis configuration process. This feature is separately licensable.

In the 2020 release, users can customize AIR damage functions for four models: AIR Hurricane Model for the United States, AIR Earthquake Model for Japan, AIR Typhoon Model for Japan, and AIR Inland Flood Model for Japan.

For detailed information about using Model Builder, refer to the Using Touchstone Model Builder guide, available on the AIR Client Portal.

Terrorism Event Set Enhancements

In addition to the Geospatial enhancements mentioned previously, improvements have been made to allow users to more easily configure deterministic event sets for modeling Terrorism risks. These include:

  • Standard users, not just system and business unit administrators, can now create custom deterministic terrorism event sets.

  • Users can select multiple weapon types when creating deterministic event sets from ring analysis results.

  • Users can create event sets by UDF, for example when they want to populate a location-level UDF column with tier information.

  • The number of building stories can now be populated based on exposure data when users create an event set from the ring analysis results and select the Small Plane Crash or Large Plane Crash weapon types.

Modify Perils

In Portfolio mode, users can now add and remove perils from within the Touchstone application. They no longer have to manually modify perils in the exposure data or in Touchstone tables. They can override perils at every level within the exposure data: contract, location, layer, reinsurance, and sublimit level. The feature includes validation to ensure that users do not put the Touchstone exposure data into an invalid state.

Geospatial Analysis Enhancements

  • Geospatial Analysis Enhancements for Combined Workers' Compensation and Property Exposure Data: To streamline the workflow when filling out the AM Best Terrorism SRQ, users can run a single Geospatial ring analysis for combined Workers' Compensation and Property exposure data without having to first convert Workers' Compensation data to Property data. Users can run the ring analysis on the combined exposure data against exposure views or multiple contracts.

  • Geospatial Analysis Enhancements for Workers' Compensation-Only Data: The Workers' Compensation-only Geospatial Ring analysis now provides users with options for configuring the number of top risks based on the employee payout value defined by the selecting the new options for injury type and time of day. The improved Workers' Compensation-only ring analysis results include individual ring accumulations by Financial perspectives, Total Employees, Shift Employees, and Total Employee Payout.

  • Geospatial Analysis and Terrorism SRQ Enhancements: Geospatial Analysis now supports generation of 1.5 million concentric rings, which enables analysis of large portfolios through Event Set Management in the Administration Console.

  • Touchstone has added a new type of grid-based Ring Analysis to Geospatial Analytics—Grid Ring analysis. A Grid Ring analysis generates ring center candidates using spacing based on a square grid defined by the user.

    • Grid Ring analysis also supports a user-specified bounding box that can be used with Marginal Impact analyses.

    • Grid-based ring analyses significantly reduce runtime and provide very similar results for exposures clustered in area.

    • Users can run Grid Ring analyses on Workers' Compensation and/or Property exposure views and can also use them to create International Deterministic Terrorism (IDT) event sets.

    • Touchstone APIs are available for this functionality.

Other Enhancements and Tools

  • Reinsurance Programs: Users can now import and export reinsurance program files that are in the CSV format. They can import and export via the Reinsurance Programs pane or through the Project function available through AIR ImportExpress and AIR ExportExpress. Touchstone still supports importing files that are in RPX format.

  • Min-Max Deductible Policy Logic: The new Min-Max algorithm addresses the accurate order of application of location limits and sub-limits with all deductibles in the policy for Detailed Loss Analyses. By default, former min-max deductible policy logic is selected. You can now choose whether to apply former or revised min-max deductible policy logic. This flexibility enables you to calculate the min-max deductible with or without the application of location terms. Users can override the default when configuring a Detailed Loss Analysis.

Touchstone Integration with Sequel Impact

Clients who license both Sequel Impact and Touchstone can now seamlessly transfer exposure data between the two applications. The transfer mechanism avoids double-keying of data into both exposure management and modeling systems, reduces rekeying errors, and enables a single workflow across both exposure management and modeling components. Sequel Impact is a powerful exposure management tool offered by Sequel Business Solutions. AIR Worldwide and Sequel Business Solutions are both Verisk businesses.

Sequel Impact users have the flexibility to trigger the transfer manually or with automated scheduling and can do this for individual accounts or entire portfolios. Touchstone provides a broad set of initial setup options to provide users with flexibility in how the data is brought into the application, including, but not limited to, defining where the data is stored and which exposure views it flows through into.

For setup information, contact your AIR account representative.

Data Updates

  • Administrative and postal data for the Caribbean countries: The updates enable you to import exposure data for the Caribbean countries for use with Touchstone 8.0 model updates for Caribbean countries. Touchstone will geocode and backfill exposure data records based on the available and supported administrative and postal boundary data and country-specific import validation rules. Changes may include changes in CRESTA, Area, and Postal names and codes; boundaries, and code formats; there may be new and deprecated names and codes. Support for city-level data import and geocoding has also been added for all Caribbean countries.

  • Annual updates to: US Census TIGER street segments (shape files), USPS ZIP+4 street segments and City/State data, and ZIP Code boundary data.

  • Annual updates to Offshore Industry Exposure Database and Property-Specific Database.

  • Annual updates to Geospatial layers. There are 76 new layers related to the AIR Inland Flood Model for the United States, AIR Earthquake Model for the Caribbean, and the AIR Tropical Cyclone Model for the Caribbean. The Geospatial module includes 67 updated layers for the AIR Inland Flood Model for the United States, the AIR Earthquake Model for Australia, and the AIR Earthquake Model for Canada.

    Users will now be able to visualize and run Geospatial analyses with 6 US Flood Depth Hazard Layers (20YR, 50YR 100YR, 200YR, 250YR, 500YR) @ 10m resolution, depicting a unified view of both fluvial and pluvial flood hazard. Previously, these hazard layers reflected only the fluvial or riverine hazard.

  • Hazard profiles updates and implementations. For a complete list, see the Touchstone Release Notes.

    • Updates to: FEMA Flood Zone and Base Flood Elevation; AIR Distance to 100-Year Flood Plain, Distance to 500-Year Flood Plain, and Flood Zone; Liquefaction likelihood; Landslide Zone.

    • Hazard profiles related to Florida Wind Mitigation (FWM) have been implemented.

    • Existing Hazard profiles representing the 2007 Florida Building Code (FBC) have been relabeled.