Willis is a global insurance and reinsurance broker. We do not underwrite ourselves, but we arrange protection between companies and governments that have excess risk and insurers, reinsurers and other capital providers who wish to assume it.

When catastrophes occur, Willis aims to ensure that sufficient funds are available to pay the millions of insurance claims from homeowners, businesses and public sector organisations to help those affected rebuild lives and infrastructure. Sometimes we support government natural catastrophe schemes that protect national populations: Turkey, Taiwan, Algeria, and Romania are four examples.In fact Willis arranges protection for around US$5 trillion of exposed risk every year. Many of us rely on Willis protection everyday without realising it.

Willis employs around 20,000 people worldwide and many of them help evaluate risk and analyse ways of sharing it at local and global levels. Our team includes meteorologists, seismologists, hydrologists, engineers, actuaries, statisticians and many other specialists. We have received research help from academic communities for many years but in 2006 Willis decided to enter into long-term partnerships with leading institutions and to fund new posts, known as Willis Research Fellows, which are focussed on these areas and more. 

The Willis Research Network (WRN) supports open academic research and publishing, the development of new risk models and applications, and an active programme of meetings and collaboration. Our ethos is to provide an open forum for the development of the science and the WRN actively works with insurers, reinsurers, catastrophe modelling companies, government research institutions and non-governmental organisations.

To download or view our "About Us" brochure please click here