Insure Our Future Global

💭 Insure Our Future Global features in recent coverage of the HM Treasury's push to grow captive insurance in the UK. Natasha White for Bloomberg draws attention to concerns that removing existing regulation for the self-insurance model to operate in the UK benefits high polluting industries. This model in question is popular and growing in offshore jurisdictions such as Bermuda, yet allows major companies to work around climate restrictions and high premiums. Moves such as this would also facilitate these actors to act further from public scrutiny, in contrast to demands of recent recommendations from European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA). 🔗 Read in full below: https://lnkd.in/eucRzU45 #Insurance #Regulation #UKGovernment

Thousands of LA homeowners are grappling not only with the heartbreak of losing their homes but also the financial catastrophe of being uninsured. Rising premiums, policy cancellations, and limited access to affordable coverage are leaving many exposed. The wildfires in LA are not an isolated event; they’re part of a broader trend driven by the climate crisis. From European floods to record-breaking droughts, the global insurance industry must step up to meet the moment—or risk being overwhelmed by it. The industry needs to embrace proactive strategies like improving its climate risk modeling to integrate robust catastrophe modeling to better assess and price risk. #InsureOurFuture Read more in Euronews:

💭 Euronews provides an in-depth look at how rising prices drove Los Angeles to become an epicentre for uninsured and underinsured properties prior to the recent wildfires breaking out. The concept of 'going bare' on coverage is a growing reality that is spreading across different geographies, as the article recalls high levels of uninsured losses in Europe during storms and floods in 2023. The role of regulation and government policy is further addressed, as also seen in Insure Our Future Global's 2024 Scorecard #WithinOurPower (link in comments), citing the recent events as wake up call for both homeowners and insurers. #InsureOurFuture #Insurance #Sustainability https://lnkd.in/erFP3QPE

"What if a big city - perhaps LA - becomes non-viable in 20 years time, how would you model that?" "I think we'd model that as a net contribution to GDP, there'd be lots of jobs in moving a city like that". That was a brief exchange I had with someone who develops climate models for financial services. It happened 18 months ago, but it keeps coming back to me now as we see the terrifying and distressing scenes from Los Angeles. Earlier this week, a colleague in LA who has since had to evacuate from her house because of the fires, sent a new Special Report in National Mortgage Professional which argues that climate-linked insurance problems are storing up conditions for a 2008-style financial crisis. Insurers are becoming less and less willing to cover the full value of many US homes because of increasing flood, fire and other climate-enhanced risks, says the Special Report. This underinsurance will cause economy-wide problems, as house prices crash, sparking financial disaster for house owners, and for banks with lots of mortgages on their books. The initiatives by state governments to shore up insurance levels are struggling, the Report continues. Hard-hitting comments from this specialist housing finance publication include:  "a climate change-induced market correction is not a distant hypothetical, but already underway”. And: “Florida’s state-run insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation and California’s insurer of last resort, the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements plan, teeter on the brink of insolvency." Ben Matic, founder and CEO of Matic, a digital insurtech platform, with access to tonnes of data on mortgages, insurance deals etc, comments that “underinsurance worsens as the impacts of climate change accelerate, consumers’ ability to afford coverage dwindles, and long-standing insurance gaps widen on properties that will simply be abandoned.” It also quotes Ted Tozer, former president of Ginnie Mae, as saying that:“underinsured foreclosures will dwarf the foreclosures during the housing crisis in low-wealth communities". So my question to the modeller - at the time very hypothetical and about underestimating economic impacts in a distant decade - seems very pressing already now. Extreme weather events are becoming more devastating, frequent and expensive than most models predicted at this amount of emissions and temperature rises. Munich Re - the world’s largest reinsurer - just issued estimates that natural disasters caused $320 billion in losses in 2024 - up from $268 billion in 2023. The real estate insurance crisis is the canary in the coalmine for climate change poison economic value in ways that it will be very hard for households, banks or public budgets to cope with.

According to Munich Re's latest published estimations, natural disasters caused losses of US$ 320bn in 2024. Since 1980, only two years have been more expensive for the global insurance market, with insured losses totalling US$ 140bn. These latest figures strongly align with the assertions of the Insure Our Future Global’s 2024 Scorecard #WithinOurPower (link in comments). The scale of the crisis is not one to be ignored, particularly as 2024 replaced 2023 as the hottest year on record. The world’s largest reinsurer says “climate change is showing its claws” and draws a direct link between climate change and increased natural disasters. Tobias Grimm, Chief Climate Scientist at the German reinsurer, calls for action in the report saying: “Our planet’s weather machine is shifting to a higher gear. Everyone pays the price for worsening weather extremes, but especially the people in countries with little insurance protection or publicly funded support to help with recovery. The global community must finally take action and find ways to strengthen the resilience of all countries, and especially those that are the most vulnerable.” #Insurance #InsureOurFuture #Sustainability https://lnkd.in/dhY8R8Du

👏 Featured in Canada's The Globe and Mail: the major shortcomings of Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited on climate, which saw the global insurer rank poorly in the 2024 Insure Our Future Scorecard. The report, entitled #WithinOurPower, ranks the top 30 major insurers on fossil fuel underwriting and investments alongside the latest research on climate attributable losses. Read now to find out how insurers can drive the change needed to a safer world. 🔗 See link to the report in comments Investors for Paris Compliance #InsureOurFuture #Insurance https://lnkd.in/eTYtb8Z4

Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited incurred $587M in catastrophic losses over just three months in 2024, contributing to Canada’s record-breaking $7.7B in insured losses for the year. As these losses continue to mount, Fairfax has an opportunity to shift from climate laggard to leader. Without a change in its approach, the company risks being left behind as peers, regulators, and markets align with #netzero. Our latest memo provides the first in-depth assessment of #climate risks at Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial. You can read the full memo on our website: https://lnkd.in/eqk4dkSD Thanks to Clare O'Hara at the The Globe and Mail for the coverage.

’More people are outraged as insurers leave them unprotected when disasters strike,’ says European co-coordinator https://lnkd.in/edeCf6NQ #InsuranceNews #Insurance Insure Our Future Global #News #InsuranceIndustry #B2B

❓ Who is the European climate insurance lagguard ❓ 🥁 ... Lloyd's of London! Despite the increasingly devastating effects of climate change and nice talks on #sustainability and #transition, Lloyd's continues to proactively drive fossil fuel expansion through it's investment and underwritting. ❌ The world's largest insurance market is the only major insurer in Europe without a commitment to stop insuring new coal projects and new oil and gas projects. 🔍 The evidence is undeniable: the insurance industry faces an existential crisis driven by climate change. Yet insurers continue to maintain significant investments in and underwriting support for the fossil fuel expansion driving these very risks. This fundamental contradiction both threatens the industry’s long-term viability and creates an unsustainable and unjust burden on communities worldwide. ➡️ With voluntary corporate actions falling far short as irreversible tipping points loom, the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) & Financial Conduct Authority need to step in and must act decisively. #InsureOurFuture ’s key recommendations include: - Requiring insurers to develop, implement and disclose 1.5°C-aligned transition plans - Mandating robust scenario analysis to account for the full complexity of climate-related events, including tipping points - Overseeing insurers’ management of climate risks, including how fossil fuel underwriting and investment exacerbate those risks, to ensure their stability and ability to provide coverage - Implementing policies that support just allocation of climate risks and costs to protect communities The insurance industry has historically helped make societies more resilient. Now it must embrace its power and accelerate the transition to clean energy, stop underwriting new fossil fuel projects, and rapidly align with credible 1.5°C transition pathways. #Lloyds #LloydsofLondon #insurance #energy #greenwashing https://lnkd.in/eS38ErMh?

Top insurance companies suffered $10.6 billion of climate-attributed losses this year, just shy of the $11.3 billion of direct premiums they underwrote for commercial fossil-fuel clients in 2023, according to Insure Our Future Global. Of the 28 insurers reviewed, more than half were hit by climate-attributed losses that exceeded the coal, oil and gas premiums they earned, Insure Our Future said in a statement. On average, fossil-fuel premiums account for less than 2% of total premiums, raising questions about why insurers aren’t using their immense influence to protect the other 98% of their business from spiraling climate risks. The report said climate change accounted for about $600 billion, or more than 33%, of global insured weather losses over the past two decades. Climate-attributed losses rose to an average 38% of total insured weather losses over the past decade, up from 31%. Insure our Future said the climate price tag should persuade the firms to stop underwriting fossil-fuel expansion and align their businesses with 1.5C transition pathways. “Insurers are walking away from communities to protect shareholder returns from losses, sparking the crisis of insurance affordability and access,” the report said. via Bloomberg