Karen Clark

Co-founder & CEO at Karen Clark & Company

Karen Clark is Co-founder and CEO of Karen Clark & Company (KCC) and a leading global authority on catastrophe risk assessment and management. Ms. Clark founded the first catastrophe modeling company and is credited with creating the catastrophe modeling industry. The probabilistic catastrophe modeling techniques and innovative technologies she pioneered decades ago revolutionized the way insurers, reinsurers, and other financial institutions assess and manage their catastrophe risk.

Ms. Clark continues to drive innovation and under her leadership, KCC has taken the powerful invention of the catastrophe model to the next level of sophistication by introducing more transparent and accurate models along with the first open loss modeling platform, RiskInsight®.

KCC has introduced multiple innovative technologies, such as daily Live Event tracking, Characteristic Events (CEs), and advanced tools for creating customized model components. KCC Reference Models currently cover over 50 countries, the perils of hurricane, earthquake, severe convective storm, wildfire and flood, and are used by global reinsurers, insurers, and ILS investors.

Ms. Clark has been recognized for her contributions to the insurance industry, including being honored as Woman of the Year by the Association of Professional Insurance Women (APIW) in 2001. In 2007, she was honored with an award certificate for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize bestowed on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for her support of the work of the IPCC since its inception. In May 2011, Reactions Magazine ranked Ms. Clark the 14th most influential person in the insurance industry over the last 30 years, and in 2012, National Underwriter named her the 6th most influential Living Legend.

Ms. Clark was honored with the Katie School of Insurance and Financial Services, Hall of Fame Innovation and Leadership Award in 2018 and the International Insurance Society’s John S. Bickley Founder’s Award in 2019.

KCC was most recently named 2021 Catastrophe Modeling Firm of the Year by Inside P&C for “precision, accuracy, and successful innovation in the science of catastrophe risk modeling.”