Setting an ILS parametric trigger

A parametric trigger is a physical threshold that determines whether a payout occurs: sustained winds above some speed inside a defined box, a magnitude above some value near a defined point, a river gauge above some stage. The threshold is objective, which is what makes the instrument work — and it is also what makes it monitorable, which is what this feature does.

Creating a trigger

Go to Triggers and create one. A trigger needs four things:

A peril. Earthquake, hurricane, wildfire, or flood. This determines which live feed the trigger is evaluated against and which measurement types are offered.

A geography. Either a point with a radius, or a polygon for territory-based structures. Point-and-radius is the right choice for a trigger written around a specific facility or city. A polygon is the right choice when the bond documentation defines a box or a set of counties — match the geography to the documentation, not to your intuition about where losses will fall.

A measurement and threshold. The physical quantity the trigger is written on — wind speed in knots, magnitude, gauge stage in feet, storm surge in feet, industry loss in dollars — and the value at which it fires. Enter the threshold exactly as the documentation states it. The platform does not round or reinterpret.

A warning level. The percentage of threshold at which you want to be told. This is the difference between finding out that a position is in play while there is still time to act, and finding out afterwards. Set it deliberately, per position: a trigger you can act on at short notice can sit closer to the threshold than one that needs a day of internal process.

How evaluation works

Triggers are evaluated continuously against live data ingested directly from the federal sources — USGS for seismic events, the National Hurricane Center for tropical cyclones, NOAA river gauges for flood. When an event enters a trigger's geography, the platform begins tracking the measured value against the threshold and records the percentage reached.

A trigger moves through four states, and the dashboard colours each one:

• Monitoring — an event is in the geography but well below threshold
• Approaching — the measured value has crossed your warning level
• Breached — the threshold has been met or exceeded
• Resolved — the event has ended without further movement

State changes are what generate alerts. A trigger sitting in Monitoring for three days does not page you.

The audit trail

Every evaluation is written to a permanent record: the measured value, the threshold, the percentage, the source of the measurement, and the timestamp. This is not incidental logging — it is the artefact your compliance team will ask for.

The value of the record is that it shows the state of knowledge at each point in time, from the authoritative source, rather than a reconstruction after the fact. When a counterparty disputes whether a threshold was met, the evaluation history is the document that settles it.

Trigger history is available per trigger in the interface and through the API for programmatic export.

Alerts

Where alerts go depends on your plan — see pricing for what each tier includes. Webhook delivery is the option to use if you want trigger state changes to land in your own systems rather than an inbox; payloads are signed so the receiver can verify them.

Set the alerting path up before hurricane season, not during it. The first time a webhook endpoint is exercised should not be the night a position is in play.

A note on what this is not

Trigger monitoring tells you what the authoritative source is currently reporting for a physical measurement in a geography you defined. It is not a payout determination, it does not replace the calculation agent, and it does not model your loss. It closes the gap between an event happening and you knowing your position is exposed to it.

For indemnity-triggered instruments, none of this applies — those settle on actual claims, not physical measurements, and no real-time physical feed can anticipate them.

Where to go next

The cat bond catalog is the reference side of the same workflow. If you are monitoring positions across many locations, portfolios aggregate exposure.