In this Risk Capital Insight episode of the On Aon podcast, Aon leaders examine what the upcoming U.S. hurricane season demands from today’s decision-makers — and how organizations can convert risk insight into decisive action. Rather than relying on historical assumptions, the discussion emphasizes how leaders use current data, analytics and planning discipline to protect people, capital and operations. The episode highlights how organizations that prepare early, communicate clearly and act in real-time are better positioned to safeguard value when it matters most.
Key Takeaways:
Experts in this episode:
Key moments:
(01:42) Why recent, quieter, hurricane seasons can create a false sense of confidence and what recent claims trends signal about insurer expectations and preparedness.
(04:26) How evolving storm behavior and secondary impacts are widening the protection gap — and why current risk insight is essential for informed decisions.
(13:10) Practical actions organizations can take now to strengthen readiness, including governance, communication planning and claims preparedness.
Soundbites:
Dan Hartung:
“If a storm does develop, there's the potential again for it to make landfall. And I would say at the end of the day, it really only takes one. So, it's best to be prepared in advance, take advantage of all of the analytics and expertise that we have to offer to help your organizations stay ahead of the curve.”
Jill Dalton:
“Communication and information is critical and to understand that claims when they happen, there are a series of expectations that need to be managed. Different stakeholders will want different information at different times.”
John Dickson:
“First of all, you're thinking about readiness and preparation. The time to think about these things is when the sun is shining, not when storm clouds are brewing. You need to act now.”
Key Resources:
Be Prepared: Natural Catastrophe Resources and Response
Intro:
Hello and welcome to On Aon — Aon’s global podcast that explores the top issues affecting businesses around the world. With each week focusing on either a Risk Capital, Human Capital, Industry or Global topic.
In today’s Risk Capital Insight episode, we’re looking ahead to this year’s U.S. Hurricane Season — which starts in a few weeks’ time and runs through until the end of November.
To help unpack what businesses should be thinking about when it comes to preparing for — and recovering from — a hurricane, we’re joined by Aon experts
Dan Hartung, Global Head of Event Response for Risk Capital at Aon,
Jill Dalton, Group Managing Director of the Property Risk Consulting team for Aon and
John Dickson, Executive Vice President for Aon Affinity
Dan Hartung
Hello and welcome to the latest Risk Capital edition of the On Aon podcast. My name is Dan Hartung. I am the global head of catastrophe response here at Aon. In today's On Aon episode, we'll be discussing this year's upcoming U.S. hurricane season and what organizations can do to make sure they're prepared for any potential disruption that a hurricane or tropical system could bring to their employees, their property, their operations, and their loved ones.
In the coming weeks, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, will release its forecast for this year's hurricane season, which runs from June 1st to November 30th.
With me today to discuss this fascinating topic and what it means for businesses and communities across the U.S. are Jill Dalton, Group Managing Director of the Property Risk Consulting Team here at Aon, and John Dixon, Executive Vice President of Aon Affinity. Welcome both.
So let's start off today with talking a bit about what can our clients expect this hurricane season?
We've obviously had several active years over the past six, with 2020 having upwards of six U.S. landfalls, followed by Hurricane Ian in 2022, and then also notably additional major landfalls in Florida with Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton in 2024.
I think many of our listeners and our clients are fascinated by this topic and always on the edge of their seats when it comes to what does the upcoming season have in store?
But Jill, perhaps I'll turn it over to you now to talk a bit more about what you're seeing on the ground from your perspective.
Jill Dalton
Yeah, thanks, Dan. Like you said, there wasn't a hurricane landfall in the U.S. last year, which was good. And the hurricanes that did hit in 2025, the impact area was limited. I'm hoping that clients haven't gotten complacent about that. A lot of people have short memories when it comes to things like this. But there have been certainly other events that have happened around the U.S. and around the world, whether it's the wildfires or the severe convective storms.
So, what we're seeing with recent claims, regardless of the peril, is continued scrutiny and demand by the insurers for thorough claim submissions, plenty of detail.
The markets were asking for more and more information, and the process was taking a lot longer.
Now that the property market is more competitive, I wouldn't say that the adjustment process is getting any easier, but because there have been fewer widespread catastrophes, what's good is that the resources of the adjustment teams are not stretched as thin. So we're seeing better responsiveness and some more flexibility from the carriers and the adjustment teams. And that's very positive. You know, of course that could change overnight.
What's hard for insurers lately is the growing complexity of our clients' businesses. But our clients' operations, those of us in Commercial Risk in the US, our global clients' operations, their financials, their reliance upon technology, their supply chains, everything is more complex.
And that's adding to the challenges of even a relatively ordinary claim.
What's very positive for us is that because it's a more competitive property insurance market, our brokers have more leverage and more negotiating capabilities in the placement process.
So we're now seeing broader coverage, fewer non-concurrencies on programs that involve multiple insurers. And that helps speed up the process.
So we're seeing the benefits of that more competitive property insurance market. And hopefully that comes through with an easier claim process.
Dan Hartung
John, what are your thoughts on around like the protection gap? Because we're still seeing some sort of challenges in terms of secondary perils and those types of things when it comes to type of coverage and expansive coverage.
John Dickson
Good question, Dan. And I think about that question, it brings me back to where you started with. 2025 was by many measures a quiet year. In fact, that quietness has persisted into ‘26. You look at the results from the first quarter of this year and global results of about $37 billion of losses when the 25-year average is about $65 billion. So we're about 43% below the average loss on a global scale at the start of this year.
We talked about changing weather patterns, warm intensity. I think there's only one conclusion, right? We've solved catastrophes.
I'm kidding. That's actually quite the opposite of what's happening here. In fact, I think what we're seeing today, our industry, which previously was really focused on solving known unknowns, is now having to wrestle with greater frequency with unknown unknowns.
And what I mean by that, you look at the way that storms are developing and the ramification of a storm. Hurricane Ida in 2021 is a great example. Here's a catastrophe, cat five, storm making landfall in Louisiana. Our experience taught us that we need to marshal all of our resources and deploy those resources to the coast of Louisiana because those individuals are going to be severely impacted for a significant amount of time. Now, it blew ashore, big impact in the area. The levee system held and there was not a repeat of Katrina.
But what did happen — first time in history, this storm retained its energy and unleashed historic flooding in Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And not only was there billions of dollars of losses that resulted, we were unprepared because of our response based upon our old experience.
So you mentioned the protection gap. Today for flood insurance, roughly 70 % of our exposures are uninsured. For wind and fire, it's significantly greater, but nowhere do we have 100% of our assets, our communities, our families protected by financial instruments that can help recover, help our communities recover, help our businesses recover.
And so this is a major concern. How do we get people to think about their risk today using today's information, making decisions today based upon current information rather than making decisions based upon what we knew yesterday?
Dan Hartung
Thanks, John. is a great point. And honestly, even more recently than Ida, we have Helene, right? Where we have a high precipitation event occurring over the southeastern U.S. and the Appalachians a few days ahead of Helene's landfall, which exacerbated the, not only the flood threat with the channeled moisture from Helene along the western side of the Carolinas in North Georgia, but it also then, secondarily,
downstream made it easier for the maintained high wind speeds of Helene to drive property damage through tree fall throughout a much wider extended area. And these are things that some of the solutions that we have in terms of modeling and being able to forecast the potential financial impacts of these sorts of events for both our insurance and our retail clients increasingly difficult because those factors are not explicitly captured in those solutions. So it definitely makes it challenging.
John Dickson
Very well said. I mean, Helene, you used to think I live on the side of a mountain, I can't flood. And here we had to deal with mountainside flooding. So you have great, great example, Dan.
Dan Hartung
When we're also so like, I'm going to pivot us a little bit, but stay on the topic of what we can do to support our clients through both navigating catastrophes driven by primary causes of loss as well as secondary, maybe unanticipated effects kind of downstream. That's where we're investing in analytical solutions that provide a centralized access point that help our clients take their own portfolio data, marry that up with key hazard and financial loss data to make decisions faster in a more targeted manner so that the impact on their business and the downstream impact on their policyholders and their individual assets is as minimally disruptive as possible.
Jill, you want to comment a bit about how your team is are using some of these new insightful analytics that we have available to our clients?
Jill Dalton
Yeah, sure Dan, that's a great point. And we've been using analytics like this for a long time. The tools just keep getting better and better. And using these sophisticated tools, our team, the insurers, they are able to get to client sites more quickly, deploying the resources where we see the storms are heading. That doesn't mean, it's important to know, it doesn't mean we can always get there though, because things like road closures, airport closures, fuel shortages. Those things that impact infrastructure can still cause us all to be delayed in getting responders to the site, no matter how much we know in advance. And that can be pretty frustrating, but something we have to always deal with.
One way we've been successful in that area, and my team, is using a drone team, right? And many of these team members are former military, have high levels of security clearance. They're able to get close to client sites, use the drones to assess the damage or the lack of damage which is also very useful for clients to know about. And then report back to us, report back to the clients so we know where to prioritize or not sending the team members.
And then the drone footage and the pictures that they take have really been game-changing on being able to minimize some disputes after a loss.
That information is really helpful to help get clients set their expectations about the speed of the response and helps them get their business up and running in whatever ways they can in the event that there's that kind of an event.
It's really been game changing since I've been doing this and other technologies that we're using in terms of helping clients mitigate the loss in terms of a loss prevention is also helping out my risk control engineering team.
So that's pretty interesting. John, how would you say some of this technology has been used in your world?
John Dickson
First of all, nothing is, to use the technical term, as cool as drones. I wish we were catching up with you. That is pretty impressive. Have you had any clients give you feedback about that application or that resource? Because that just sounds so powerful.
Jill Dalton
Oh yeah, believe me, I love saying I have a drone team, right? That's the coolest thing ever, but…
John Dickson
I wanna be able to say that…
Jill Dalton
Oh yeah, clients have definitely commented that the use of this technology and our ability to get there really quickly and like the examples of where we can tell them, your property is okay.
We think about, gosh, it's good to see where a client's location has been devastated, but even more impacting, maybe more, but even really helpful has been to tell a client, you know, your facility is fine.
As soon as they can get there, they'll be fine. That's really important too.
John Dickson
That’s powerful. I think a similar story. I think about the technological advances in our industry. Historically, we would use large-language models, catastrophe models and such to have conversations with our capital markets, the folks that are taking the risk on scale on some of these large portfolio placements, ensuring large geographies, large holdings of properties, et cetera.
And what's happening now is so exciting. Where we're seeing amazing investment and traction within Aon is using that technology to better communicate to the client. This is what your risk looks like. And here are the options that you have available to you.
And the conversations are more compelling, more impactful than they've ever been. Now we can tell a client using our analyzers, this is how your portfolio stacks up. Here's one or two views on loss and exposure.
It's incredibly exciting times, energized time. I say frequently in the past that our industry was losing the race with the weather. The weather was moving faster than the industry was able to adapt. But I honestly believe that with the investments, the smart money and the smart bets that Aon is making today, we're starting to win that rate. We're catching up to the weather.
Dan Hartung
Yeah, those are great points, John. Perhaps we can be a little bit ahead of the weather, but we're never going to be able to be more than a few days ahead of the weather or at best five days if it comes to higher confidence hurricane forecasting.
Jill, can you talk maybe a bit about what our clients can do and how we are helping them prepare ahead of the season since we don't have the luxury of knowing what we don't know?
Jill Dalton
You're absolutely right. We may be better able to predict when things are going to happen, but I think as John had said, we still see things happening all the time that we never would have thought would happen before. I've been doing this a long time. You think you've seen it all, but no, we haven't seen it all.
Some tips about what clients need to be doing. First, make sure the people on the ground at their locations — very basic stuff — they have a checklist of the things that they need to do to protect their facility and contents and to minimize the damage.
There's a lot of people that can help clients with these checklists. We have these checklists on our Be Prepared site and make sure that the employees have a communication plan. They know who will be on site. They know who will be available.
Things like having a satellite phone to communicate in case phone lines go down. This is very basic emergency response planning, business continuity, but very important and to keep those plans up to date and that the people on the ground are trained to be prepared for that.
The second thing is to make sure that the claims team is assembled and that you as a client and you the people on the ground know who to call right away. Don't wait until something happens to say, wait, who's my adjuster? What's the name of that guy? And get to know the claims team. And that claims team starts with people, our claims advocate, right? We want clients to know who that is, know who to call. That's the adjuster, whether it's a third-party adjuster or an adjuster that works for the insurance companies, the restoration company, the forensic accountant, any specific industry experts like engineers or building consultants depending on what industry clients operate on. These experts are important. And if you can, get to know these people now before something happens and make sure they're familiar with your operations and also with your insurance program.
Dan Hartung
That was a great point, Jill, especially when it comes to when you talk about contacts, talking about making sure you know who your people are. Also make sure that as your trusted partner that we know who your key people are, because that's how we can help make sure that information gets to them and isn't bottlenecked, say, through one particular individual as an event unfolds.
Jill Dalton
Exactly right, Dan. Exactly right. And another thing that's important is to make sure that clients know what their exposures are and they know where their locations are. They know what the values are. They know what operations in the area are going to be impacted.
Another thing is to understand the policy terms and conditions and make sure that the stakeholders also are aware of those policy terms and conditions.
Likely the program terms have changed since the last renewal. And remember I said that the property market is a lot more competitive, so hopefully those terms and conditions have improved year over year, but still good to know what they are. And then it's also important to communicate about the process and these potential policy restrictions with the stakeholders. Those stakeholders being your finance, your procurement, your customer relations, your facilities management.
These are all really important ways to be ready in the event that something happens and it'll make the process go a lot more smoothly.
Dan, I'm going to ask you now to talk a little bit more about some of those analytics and how some of these analytics are helping before events.
Dan Hartung
Yeah, thanks, Jill. So that I would say, in addition to some of those really important pointers that you just covered, it's also important that our clients are providing us with their latest portfolio or schedule of values.
It's important that we have the exposure so that any types of insights that we're providing back reflect the most current portfolio and the portfolio that's actually being impacted by an event as it unfolds.
On the commercial risk side, you talk about providing, if our clients are providing their key personnel contact information to us, as well as the associated asset level information, our solutions can then in turn provide them real-time notifications throughout the entire duration of event in terms of which locations are most likely impacted and different severity levels at those locations — all via email without them needing to even go into a system.
But when it comes to understanding what the potential impacts of a hurricane could be, for example, since we're talking about hurricane season, it is understanding aggregates. It's understanding what kind of the range of financial outcomes could be. What is the range of values of an individual asset? What are the range of portfolio outcomes? And then making sure that the financial probability curve, if you will, is aligned with risk transfer and ultimately the client's risk appetite.
So you say that the terms could change and hopefully they've improved ultimately given the current market. That's very much a positive. But if you think about then taking advantage of that market, you as the client, do you need additional coverage? Do you maybe need a different type of risk transfer mechanism to further protect your bottom line in a way that different stakeholders are more comfortable with the loss potential? Or that just ultimately better align with your organization's risk appetite given the information that you now have on hand before an event unfolds.
John, you want to talk a little bit about potential changes to programs or different insurance covers that are available for clients ahead of the season?
John Dickson
I love where you're going, Dan. Taking today's investments, today's capabilities and harnessing the power of those resources to craft specific individualized solutions, there's no risk out there that is universal. And there is no exposure, no individual, no business whose exposure to risk is the same universally. And so today, being able to take the things that you and Jill were talking about and configure those in a way that speaks to these individual needs is quite simply exciting.
And listen, in our industry, there's really two absolutes, right? We know that there's going to be another catastrophe and we don't know where it's going to be. And so armed with that knowledge, this is a complex problem, solving responses to hurricanes or other large scale, massive events. And to respond to that complex problem, it's important to think about ease, what I heard you say, Jill, ease of access, ease of use, acceptability to information, and then comprehension.
And that's where we we focus our efforts is how we can take today's insights and distill them down in a way that resonates with our clients so that they can take appropriate action.
Dan Hartung
Thanks, John. Really great, great points. Let's bring us back and I think we'll wrap up our show today with a little bit of advice for our listeners and perhaps one piece of wisdom that we would each leave the audience with today.
I'm happy to start. there's been a lot of chatter in the press already about the 2026 hurricane season outlook, despite the official forecast from NOAA still a couple of weeks away. The expectation at this point from different forecast agencies is a slightly below average to average season with terms being tossed out there like super El Nino that are attention-grabbing, but it ultimately boils down to the different conditions and sets of variables that influence the level of activity over the course of the season. So level of wind shear and ocean temperatures.
Sea surface temperatures are currently slightly above normal, expected to remain above normal, that's favorable for storms. And a moderate to strong El Nino, if it transpires out to the peak of hurricane season, being August, September, October timeframe, usually is associated with above average wind shear is not favorable.
So whichever one of those wins out will ultimately dictate how the season transpires. But if a storm does develop, there's the potential, again, for it to make landfall. And I would say at the end of the day, it really only takes one.
So it's best to be prepared in advance, take advantage of all of the analytics and expertise that we have to offer to help your organizations stay ahead of the curve. Jill?
Jill Dalton
Yeah, I would say communication and information is critical and to understand that claims, when they happen, there are a series of expectations that need to be managed. Different stakeholders will want different information at different times. The CEO, the CFO, they're going to want to know about coverage. How are the operations being affected because of the event?
The facilities management, the people on the ground. They want to know who's coming on site. Who am I talking to? Who should I trust? They'll have questions about, can we replace what's been damaged? Do we have to hold off until insurance pays? How will the P&L be affected?
The adjuster who works for the insurance companies, he's going to want to set a reserve. He wants to know what happened with the claim. He has to report back to his insurance company. He's going to want to set a reserve.
The controller that works for your company, he's going to say, when's the first advance payment coming? What should I put into our receivables? When's that coming? And then other stakeholders like maybe it's the landlord or maybe it's the tenant or it's your customers. They want to know what's happening at the location.
So my advice is to keep communicating constantly and keep the information flowing so that everyone is up to speed and everyone knows where things are in the process of the claim.
Those are my tips. John, how about you?
John Dickson
I’m going to cheat and go with two. So I know you said Dan, you asked for one, but I'm an overachiever, I guess.
First of all, you're thinking about readiness and preparation. The time to think about these things is when the sun is shining, not when storm clouds are brewing. You need to act now.
And that brings me to my second point. We're constantly thinking about how to turn the conversation from, can't happen to me to what if it does happen to you? And that's where the conversation gets real. And the way that we turn that conversation is constantly thinking about making today's decisions using the best and most current information possible.
You can't think about a 10-year-old risk map as guidance. You can't look at exposure results from 20 years ago to think about how to respond today. Use the information you have available from today to make today’s decisions.
Dan Hartung
Thank you both. are really great insights and I really appreciate you both joining me today to share your thoughts with our audience.
So that's our show for today. Don't forget, you can find out more about our event analytics, resilience resources, or your local Aon contact information by heading to Aon.com.
In the next months, we'll have more episodes on risk capital topics, including a deep dive into the ever fascinating and currently trending topic of data centers. Until next time.
Outro
Thanks for tuning into the latest episode of On Aon. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to visit Aon.com to learn more about Aon.
We’ll be back later on this week with a special episode — looking at the impact of the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.