British Insurance Awards 2019: Risk and Resilience Award - RMS

Winner: RMS

The threat of an earthquake puts hundreds of thousands of low income families at risk of death, injury and economic loss due to house damage or collapse.  

Winners of the Risk and Resilience award, RMS has collaborated tirelessly to improve the safety of vulnerable over-populated Colombian communities in high-risk areas.

RMS’s mission to empower the future for vulnerable communities across the globe took it to Latin America, where early sponsorship of preventive activities led to a programme of targeting low-income families living in informal neighbourhoods in Bogotá.

A combination of RMS’s risk modelling expertise and charity Build Change’s technical knowledge and simple grass-roots approach shapes plans for retrofitting homes in vulnerable neighbourhoods; an initiative that could significantly reduce economic loss and save lives.

Harnessing existing local skills, RMS and Build Change successfully demonstrated that retrofits could be completed with a minimal amount of engineering training, and for less than half the price of demolishing and rebuilding.

“Very practical application with tangible results bringing real benefits,” commented one judge.

The Government of Colombia has since decided to make the retrofitting of 600,000 homes an immediate national priority.

This award recognises Build Change’s amazing work, and how RMS analytics helps drive understanding of resilience investments at all levels from local to national. As this initiative in Colombia shows, working together we can prove the effectiveness of retrofitting against earthquakes and demonstrate that focused structural planning can save both lives and money, for families, governments and countries.

Ben Brookes, managing director – capital and resilience solutions, RMS