In 2006, a group of senior executives of several national disaster schemes met during the Centenary Conference of the San Francisco Earthquake. It was agreed unanimously that the discussions we had were sufficiently valuable to continue at an annual World Forum of Catastrophe Insurance Schemes. The Consorcio de Compensacion de Seguros graciously invited us to Madrid for the second World Forum meeting in September 2007 and several additional schemes were represented there, including the world’s first international programme, the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility. Further meetings have been held in Iceland (June 2008) and Taiwan in September 2009, to mark the tenth anniversary of the Chi Chi earthquake. Fourteen schemes were represented at the Taiwan meeting. The 2010 meeting of the World Forum will be held in Bucharest, Romania in October 2010. The World Forum’s aims are to learn from each other’s knowledge and experience and to make this available to new and emerging schemes and their sponsors. As much can be learned from differences as from similarities. Encouragement is given to concentrate on concrete problems and issues and not to deal so much with abstract or academic matters. The format of World Forum meetings has been established as commencing with presentations by members on their own schemes, focussing on any recent developments or activities. Every scheme is different and has its own features of interest, so lively discussion is ensured at these sessions. We progress to matters of mutual interest, some of which have been researched by members. Forum members are interested in establishing a common terminology in the catastrophe insurance field, the OECD Global Earthquake Model (GEM) project, forms of alternative risk transfer, post-disaster inflation studies and hazard modelling. We welcome as new members, government or quasi-government disaster insurance schemes. If you are interested in joining the World Forum, or in more information about it, please contact one of the members whose details are on this site. | 
