Central role: insurance and the climate transition

The insurance industry has raised its voice on resilience, and is achieving political cut through following natural catastrophes, but the crucial role it can play worldwide in delivering new technologies that lower emissions tends to fly under the radar.

Investors need confidence to commit funds to support new technologies and to take on projects that necessarily involve uncertainty, and insurance is as much part of that conversation as banks, governments, private equity and other participants.

“We’re not very good at articulating that as an industry, we are seen as a downside protection mechanism, which we are, but the role that plays in enabling investment, we need to articulate that better,” Aon Global Head of Climate Strategy Richard Dudley tells insuranceNEWS.com.au.

“We do that occasionally, but not very consistently, and that’s an area where I think the industry can elevate its ability to articulate the role we can play in trying to drive this transition, which we all desperately need.”

Mr Dudley says product innovation can free up investment flows, as has been shown in the development of methods to cover intangible assets, and work by Aon around the output from new technologies.

More innovation in difficult areas will happen over the next few years, and once something is insurable, banks are more comfortable to lend and investments may flow where they didn’t previously, he says.

“There’s a lot of money out there that’s queuing up to invest in transition technologies to help the world decarbonise. That’s globally, as well as here in Australia, but a lot of the money isn’t being deployed quickly enough, because there’s too much risk,” he says. “Our role is to help to de risk some of those investments, so we can speed up money flow to transition.”

Similarly, there is also a greater role for public and private finance to combine to tackle insurance risks as changes are managed and the net zero transition is supported, he says. Insurance catastrophe pools are a well-established approach but more innovations will occur around private and public projects.

Issues around resilience have been highlighted recently with the impact of Hurricane Ian in Florida.

Insured losses may prove to be the highest for a US hurricane since Katrina in 2005, based on a number of early forecasts released. Modelling company RMS has estimated the losses at around $US67 billion ($105 billion), with the best estimate within a potential range of $US53-74 billion ($83-116 billion).

Mr Dudley says the insurance industry has long looked at helping people become more resilient, but impacts from secondary perils are rising and that’s requiring a different approach to looking at the risks.

“We’re having to do it with a look-forward lens, rather than a look-backwards lens, I think that’s the big difference,” he says. “There’s a big debate in the industry, which is intensifying about what the right price is for the risks.”

Improving resilience also comes back often to encouraging investment and better aligning timeframes, given that property policies tend to be annual and investments may take place over years.

Mr Dudley says all industries and locations are grappling with the issues around resilience, what net zero means across their operations and the risks not just for physical assets but for areas such as directors’ and officer’s cover and all parts of their business. Clients are looking for more assistance.

“This topic is relevant to every single person in every single country in the world. And that’s very clear in the way our clients are now asking us questions,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re a big integrated oil and gas company, or whether you are a bank, or whether you are a firm that is focused on logistics, or a hotel group, or a municipality in northern Canada, everybody is concerned about this topic, and what it means for them, from a resilience perspective, and the cost of transition.”

Insurance has a key role to play, not just in providing cover for climate-related risks, but also in delivering the fundamental changes required for the future.