ZURICH: Sabine Holl is a former rocket engineer who still gets a thrill from watching a shuttle blast off into space. “You bet, I enjoy that very much ... if I get the chance to go to a launch, I’ll do it,” she said.

Her colleague Peter Luck pours over glossy magazines for the latest gossip on rock bands and celebrities. He takes a professional interest in ageing pop stars who continue touring well into their 60s.

Holl and Luck are members of an eclectic band of people who use their special talents and knowledge to assess risk for reinsurers, adding a touch of quirkiness and real-life edge to an industry often stereotyped as boring or pedantic.

The former rocket engineer and Luck work for Swiss Re, the world’s second-biggest reinsurer by market value, using their expertise to price insurance contracts.

Holl underwrites insurance covering satellites during their launch and life in orbit. Luck leads a team covering the risk that sports events or music concerts might be cancelled.

Swiss Re was established in 1863 after a fire destroyed two-thirds of the Swiss town of Glarus and revealed the inadequacies of existing insurance cover in the face of extreme, catastrophic events.

The company takes risks on its books that are too large or too volatile for primary insurers, its clients.

To make sure that a heavy hit in one part of their business does not hurt their overall books, reinsurers like Swiss Re spread risks as widely as they can.

Big reinsurers typically employ a small army of meteorologists, chemists, doctors and other experts to set up increasingly sophisticated models to assess the risks from hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and other catastrophes.

Swiss Re’s natural catastrophe unit can simulate up to 500,000 individual Atlantic storm events for the firm’s hundreds of underwriters. But some of the more unusual risks require a more exotic breed of specialist.—Reuters