Aon Announces Completion of Property and Workers' Compensation Terrorism Exposure Analysis Tools

Business Wire, Nov 15, 2002

Business Editors

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 15, 2002

Aon Corporation's (NYSE:AOC) subsidiary, Aon Re Inc., announced today that its catastrophe modeling affiliate Impact Forecasting has completed development of its property and workers' compensation terrorism exposure analysis tools for U.S. insurers, large employers and property owners. The detail analysis tools utilize street address or zip code information to assess aggregations of property and workers' compensation exposures and their relative proximity to a database of approximately 5,200 high visibility potential targets and over a million less visible but important landmarks or facilities.

"While there has been a significant effort since the events of September 11, 2001 to model the potential financial consequences of future terrorist attacks, the inability to credibly predict the frequency of such events have left insurers, large employers and property owners to simply manage aggregations of risks near potential targets," said Michael Bungert, President and CEO of Aon Re Inc. Bungert added, "While we have helped our clients consider their combined workers' compensation and property risk aggregations, the new tools we have developed analyze their relative proximity to a range of potential targets. The resulting relativity by type of potential target is an important first step in differentiating clients in a market that continues to struggle to provide meaningful insurance and reinsurance solutions for such risks."

Bryon Ehrhart, President of Aon Re Services added, "While credible terrorism risk modeling at this time is deterministic or based upon specific scenarios, and likely will remain so until the potential frequency of severe events can be better estimated, developing a tool that allows us to provide insurers and reinsurers with relative risk indexes by potential target type has been a high priority since late September 2001. Senior managers of insurers, large employers and property owners that utilize our tools are able to consider and manage relative exposures in addition to simply managing aggregates."

About Aon

Aon Corporation is a holding company that is comprised of a family of insurance brokerage, consulting, and insurance underwriting subsidiaries. Aon Re Inc. is part of Aon Re Worldwide and provides traditional, alternative risk transfer and capital markets based reinsurance advisory and execution services to insurers and reinsurers. Aon Re Worldwide's client advisory services include, dynamic financial analysis, rating agency capital modeling assistance, capital allocation and optimization services, catastrophe modeling services, regulatory assistance, tax planning and capital markets structuring and placement services.

This press release may contain certain statements relating to future results, which are forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from either historical or anticipated results, depending on a variety of factors. Potential factors that could impact results include the general economic conditions in different countries around the world, fluctuations in global equity and fixed income markets, rating agency actions, the cost and availability of financing, the completion, cost and timing of the capital enhancement plan, changes in commercial property and casualty premium rates, the competitive environment, the actual cost of resolution of contingent liabilities and other loss contingencies, the ultimate impact of the business transformation plan, and the timing and resolution of related insurance and reinsurance issues relating to the events of September 11, 2001. Further information concerning the Company and its business, including factors that potentially could materially affect the Company's financial results, are contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.