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(upbeat music)

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<v ->Hi, I am Ellie, the Curious Geographer.

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This episode of "The Curious Geographer"

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is brought to you in collaboration with Time for Geography

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and presented in partnership with Verisk.

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Last episode, we met Shane Latchman,

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Vice President and Managing Director at Verisk.

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Verisk collects and analyses data

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to help businesses and communities

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understand and manage risks such as natural disasters.

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They use technology such as GIS

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to turn data into smart insights,

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helping to make the world a safer place.

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In this episode, we are taking a deep dive

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into the career of catastrophe modelling.

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What does a career in this industry look like?

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What geographical skills are used?

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And if you are interested in this career,

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how do you get there?

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So let's dive straight in.

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Welcome, Shane.

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Can you start by telling us what is your role at Verisk

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and can you give us an overview of the company?

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<v ->Thanks, Ellie, great to be here.

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So in my role at Verisk,

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I am Vice President and Managing Director

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of the Extreme Events Solutions Business Unit

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within Verisk's London office.

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And what Verisk is doing is we do many things.

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A big part of it is what you said before,

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which is essentially taking data

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and coming up with insights from that data.

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But really what we're doing

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is we're focusing on that from an insurance angle.

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And within the Extreme Events Solutions Business Unit,

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a large part of what we are doing

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is analysing the risk from natural catastrophes

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for the insurance industry.

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As part of my role specifically,

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I am Managing Director

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and get involved in many different things.

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So one is interacting with regulators and rating agencies,

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so people like Lloyd's of London or the Bank of England.

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And they are of course quite interested in disasters,

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since that's quite important

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in terms of financial stability,

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at least for the insurance sector.

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The second thing I do

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is working to support our sales functions

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in large parts of Europe.

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So anything from Turkish and Israeli earthquake

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to Italian floods to French hail to UK windstorms,

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really looking at the range of perils

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across the different parts of Europe.

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And then finally another part of my role

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is bringing manmade catastrophe solutions

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to the insurance industry,

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things like strikes, riots, and civil commotion.

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<v ->It's quite broad.

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What does a typical work day look like for you

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and which geographical skills do you use?

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Now I'm just going to start by saying,

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and I know that you'll mention this,

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that you're not a geographer,

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but you do work with lots of geographers.

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In fact, you are actually a mathematician.

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But from your knowledge and working with geographers,

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what skills do you use in your career?

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<v ->So I'll start with a typical workday.

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So as you mentioned there, it's obviously quite broad,

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the number of things that I'm doing.

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The easiest way to summarise it is just lots of meetings.

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So that's a big part of my job.

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I think meetings are much maligned.

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People may say, oh you know, I have another meeting.

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But I think meetings when they're done well

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are really engaging.

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The way I see it, an email is finite,

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but a conversation is infinite.

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So if you prepare for that conversation well,

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you can get a lot of great insights from both parties.

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And so that's a large part of what I'm doing,

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meeting with regulators and rating agencies

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and also insurers and reinsurers

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and a range of different stakeholders,

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including internally as well.

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In terms of geographical skills,

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of course GIS is a big part of catastrophe modelling.

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An example is early in 2025,

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there were these wildfires in California,

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quite devastating wildfires.

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Part of what our insured clients need to do,

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understand very quickly

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how much exposure do they have to that wildfire?

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What the total amount that they could lose, for example,

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or what the likely amount that they will lose.

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And that requires GIS skills to do that.

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Another example is it's really important

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to ensure that our models account

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with climate change that's already happened.

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And so climate change is a big part of what we do,

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ensuring that any trends that we find

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are included into the models to potentially rebase them

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when those trends are found.

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And then finally, another example

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is if we're looking at strikes, riots, and civil commotion,

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what I mentioned there,

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and they're looking to see

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what is the most likely places that it can happen.

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A lot of the downscaling and insights comes

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using geographical data

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such as economic data, population data and so on,

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a lot of which involves geographical skills.

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<v ->Brilliant.

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And I know you mentioned GIS, and a lot of students

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start to use the skills of GIS in school.

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So it's really interesting to see,

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if you're interested in GIS,

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what a career actually using the software can do

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and how it can impact lives around the world.

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So what inspired you to do this career

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and how did you get started?

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<v ->It's an interesting story.

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So as you mentioned, I studied maths,

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studied actuarial science.

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And whilst I was studying,

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I was doing a lot of maths that was connected to finance.

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And at some point,

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I started thinking in certain branches of finance,

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it was very hard to prove that what you were doing was true.

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And that was a big part of it.

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I wanted to be involved in something

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that I was reasonably certain was true.

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And I remembered when I was 16, back in Trinidad,

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studying a-level physics,

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and there was an experiment with a ball.

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And you take this ball, you drop the ball,

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the ball bounces, and it comes back up to a certain height.

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And you can estimate how high this ball would bounce

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if you knew the coefficient of elasticity of that ball.

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It's very simple.

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But what it said was that you could predict the results.

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There was an element of predictability,

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and that, to me, said that science

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had an element of predictability in it.

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And so I identified that I wanted to get involved

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in something to do with science.

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And I came across catastrophe modelling in my studies,

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and so I decided to do my dissertation on the topic.

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I was able to wangle an invite to a conference

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that Verisk were doing at the time.

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And then I met some senior people.

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I asked them to help me with my dissertation,

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and the rest is history.

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<v ->Wow, so Verisk was quite early on

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in terms of when you were doing your dissertation,

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in terms of your world of careers,

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which is quite interesting how you start talking to people

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and find similarities of your interests.

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<v ->Exactly.
<v ->What advice would you give

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to a student listening

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who's looking to start a career in catastrophe modelling?

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<v ->So whenever I get asked,

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what are you looking for when you are interviewing?

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I always say three things.

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The first is reasoning ability,

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the second is curiosity,

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and the third is interpersonal skills.

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And I'll just explain why.

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So the reasonability, so we are in London,

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and London is a very client-facing office.

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And what we are doing

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is we are getting asked by our clients questions,

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and we need to answer those questions.

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And sometimes those questions are quite hard,

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and they require a lot of reasoning ability

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to understand, well first off,

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why is the client asking this question,

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how do I solve this question, and so on.

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That's why reasoning is really important.

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And the second is curiosity.

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Curiosity is because catastrophe remodelling is so big.

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You keep digging, and you're digging, and you're digging.

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This is my 17th year.

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You never reach the bottom.

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No matter how long you do it,

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it is very deep and it's very broad.

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So curiosity is important because it's good to be curious

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and want to know why is this thing this way,

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and therefore that helps to just from yourself

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expand your overall knowledge,

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and then your value to the company

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and the clients and so forth.

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And the third thing I tell them is interpersonal skills.

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Interpersonal skills are important

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for team working of course,

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but also, as we are a client-facing office

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and we meet our clients in London very often,

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it's important to have good interpersonal skills,

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'cause of course you're going to be engaging

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with that client in an engaging way.

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I think the other thing I would say

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is that if you're thinking about what you can do

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in terms of background before getting into cat modelling,

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those three things are really more soft skills.

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Certainly anything to do with coding skills is quite useful.

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Things like Python, things like things like R, Excel skills,

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if you could do an Excel course is really,

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really quite useful.

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Anything that gives you a good background

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of statistics and insurance is also useful.

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And of course, all those geographical concepts

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you'll be using from day to day

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across all the natural hazards,

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the climate change part, GIS, et cetera,

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they're all very useful within cat modelling.

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<v ->Brilliant.

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And we have a few students,

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I know I teach a few students

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who absolutely love the physical geography side,

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love looking at natural disasters,

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but are also quite scientific,

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they do a lot of those STEM subjects.

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So it really does seem like it's a really good link,

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as geography is between many different subjects,

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and drawing interests together.

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<v ->Definitely.

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<v ->Thank you so much for joining us, Shane.

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It was fascinating to hear

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about a career in catastrophe modelling

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and the work that you do as well and how you got there.

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So thank you for being a guest on "The Curious Geographer".