©Anna Gordon Risky business: Trevor Maynard says events such as Superstorm Sandy are not exceptional When Trevor Maynard travels, he turns up at the airport a couple of hours before most people would. "Just in case the taxi breaks down or [is] attacked by a swarm of frogs," he says. This is not the sign of a worrier, he insists, but a rational response to risk. Let the data speak for itself. It's not about being overcautious. As head of the exposure management and reinsurance team at Lloyd's of London, the insurer, thinking of worst-case scenarios and calculating the likelihood of a disaster is his job. Despite being mired in death and catastrophe, the grey-haired 42-year-old is not, he says, gloomy but entirely "sensible." A trained actuary who studied mathematics, he applies data to every area of his life: even childcare. It's not about scare­mongering or being overcautious. It's about being aware of the true risk and then acting in accordance with it. People do run into the road, so you don't let a three-year-old play in the front garden unattended, but you do let a 16-year-old. However, not every disaster can be planned for. Clearly, some things are too big . . . asteroids killed the dinosaurs: so, you're not going to care if your insurance is paid off. Based since 2005 in the inside-out office designed by "starchitect" Richard Rogers, he took over the team in March 2011, just two days after the earthquake and tsunami hit Fukushima in Japan. We have modelled the impact of earthquakes in Japan for some time. The 2011 Japanese event was a surprise in several ways. Firstly, the magnitude of an event at that location was outside our expectations; secondly, the chain of events that led to the severe damage at the Fukushima nuclear reactor was not commonly modelled. When disaster happens on an un­precedented scale or unravels in an unexpected way, he checks it against the mathematical models his department runs to see if there was something foreseeable they should have included. Despite the severe financial losses to Lloyd's that year - 2011 proved to be full of disasters, resulting in a loss of £516m for the insurer as a big earthquake in New Zealand and severe floods in Thailand followed the Japanese quake - he does not believe his team was at fault. Scientifically, people didn't expect a quake of that magnitude [in Japan], so that was a surprise. I don't think that implies an error. It just implies that there's a lot about this planet that we don't fully understand. "Most things that happen, people describe as exceptional, and I'm trying always to say "no they weren't, they were absolutely predictable."" Superstorm Sandy was seen by many as exceptional. But it was en­tire­ly foreseeable, he insists. With climate change, sea level [rising], warmer pools of water, you absolutely would expect Sandy situations to occur. He warns against hyperbole: "Don't describe that as exceptional, because you won't be prepared for the next one." Sandy, which hit the Caribbean and North America in October 2012, res­ulted in a £1.4bn payout. Yet Lloyd's still made pre-tax profits of £2.77bn last year. There is a danger in painting a catastrophe as unusual, he says. People have very short memories. And things that are very rare are either fixated on and given too much weight, or they're totally ignored. Usually what happens is, when it's new, people fixate on it and then very, very quickly it just gets forgotten, and then it gets completely overlooked. He adds: "The danger is that the risk hasn't gone away. Sometimes it could be growing. While some see beauty in numbers, he sees solutions. Solving [maths] problems is important. Some people think it's an art rather than a science, and it has a lot of artistic elements to it. But for me solving a problem [is] part of the appeal. As well as looking at the probability of disasters, he talks to scientists and policy makers to refine his understanding of risk. He says 20 per cent of his job is office-based, the rest "running round talking to people." There are 18 people in his department, split into four teams: emerging risks, reinsurance, exposure management and modelling. He cites synthetic biology, which he describes as "genetic modification [using] a computer," as an example of an emerging risk. The good side is that it could be used to "solve food problems; you might be able to genetically engineer drought resistance, [or use it in] medicines, biofuels." The flipside is that "when you're tinkering with natural processes it's not easy to foresee the full outcomes. The insurance industry paid £150bn for the wonder technology that was asbestos. So part of our job is to look out for the next asbestos. There is also the possibility that a terrorist cell gets hold of the equipment. They could conceivably dev­elop or genetically modify something like smallpox and then carry out [a] bioterrorism attack. So we're trying to think of the knock-on impact to the insurance industry. Another area of emerging risks is "wreck removal." The [shipping] vessels are getting much bigger, they're absolutely enormous now. The environmental concerns around wreck removal have increased. He ponders a worst-case scenario: a tanker sinking close to the Arctic, where the infrastructure to remove it is not readily available, the conditions are horrible and the implications for the environment would be extreme. His job is not just about mapping risk, he insists. It is also about influencing policy makers. His team rec­ent­ly submitted research to the US's Feder­al Energy Regulatory Commission on the risk of magnetic storms from the sun that could melt electricity transformers, which take months to rebuild. We'd actually rather the risk is managed; therefore, the insurance cost goes down; the premium would be less. He denies talking up risk to scare bus­inesses into taking out insurance. He views the industry as a force for good. Insurance helps pick people up after disaster. Your GDP could be severely harmed by a major event like an earthquake, and it can set you back 20 years. Whereas if you've got insurance in place, then very rapidly you get an injection of capital, and can move on from that. He even has an unusually benevolent view on overpaying for holiday in­surance. I see it as sharing risk among people. I like the fact that if I'm not collecting [on his travel policy] then I'm helping someone else. So far, he has put a brave face on the catastrophes he deals with on a daily basis, but one threat does concern him: climate change. "People think this is tomorrow's problem," he says. They do not probe the knock-on effects on their business. There might be more political tension in some parts of the world, because food's going to be more expensive. Before you know it, you've put together a scenario where you can see there's actually quite a lot of stress on your business. He pauses for breath. With increasing globalisation and supply chain issues, then you start to see that climate changes in some parts of the world that are far removed from you are actually having a big impact on your locally based business.