Ukraine launches Marsh McLennan-supported war risk data platform

Ukraine has activated the data platform supported by Marsh McLennan that enables insurers, investors and governments to consolidate and analyse war risks in the country.

Marsh McLennan committed in June to support the government of Ukraine in designing and testing the platform.

This came after the broker designed a framework proposal for a war risk pool to help facilitate Ukraine’s reconstruction, a move first revealed by this publication.

The proposal was set out at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in London, during which the Ukrainian government consented to share detailed loss data with Marsh McLennan to establish the authoritative database.

Operated by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, the data platform aggregates data received from the police, military, security services, rescue services, transport services, and government institutions.

The data platform consolidates detailed maps of war-related incidents in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022, defined as individual events relating to Russian hostilities, such as missile, drone or shelling attacks.

This includes granular insight into the frequency and type of attacks by location over time, as well as the types of assets targeted and damage levels sustained.

The accurate data platform is designed to enhance transparency around the impact of the conflict to date, and the degree of war risk.

According to the platform, 76 percent of communities had seen no war-related incidents in 2023 up to 1 October. The equivalent figure since the invasion began is 66 percent, indicating the progress that Ukraine has made over the past year.

In addition, 101 once-occupied communities have been recovered from Russia by Ukraine since the invasion began.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, commented that this demonstrates that “much of Ukraine is open for investment now”.

Nine percent of communities were classified as low-incident communities in 2023, having experienced one war-related incident.

Hostilities have been concentrated on a small set of Ukrainian communities, with 9 percent subjected to intense shelling.

John Doyle, president and CEO of Marsh McLennan, commented: “Today marks a milestone in Ukraine’s road to recovery and reconstruction from the ongoing effects of this brutal conflict.

“Ukraine’s data platform – the first of its kind – empowers the global insurance and investment community, as well as governments, with data to evaluate risks much more accurately to create greater confidence for investment.”

Public-private partnership

The data platform is intended to be used as a springboard to the pioneering build of a vast war risk pool for Ukraine.

As The Insurer revealed in June, Marsh McLennan’s proposed framework is for a multi-national public-private partnership based on existing terrorism insurance pools currently operating in several G7 nations, such as France, Australia and the UK.

Under the framework, it is proposed that (re)insurers provide pooled coverage in combination with risk mitigation, modelling and claims management services, with government backstops in the event of major loss.

Insurance is essential to reconstruction as the $400bn+ rebuild costs to Ukraine’s infrastructure and economy are so vast, it is inevitable that G7 nations will have to rely on private sector support to help finance the costs.

Marsh McLennan’s broad framework could eventually underpin the project financing for Ukrainian recovery and reconstruction, which it is estimated will cost up to $1trn.