This is a preview of the content you can access if you sign up to the Insurance Financial Services Faculty membership. This article gives vital insight into what insurers and banks think about climate change risk and will be invaluable as climate change becomes a significant priority for business.

On 22 November the ICAEW gathered representatives of the insurance industry and independent experts to explore how the sector understands its relationship with nature.

In the full article, you can read how insurers explain their limited disclosures following the TCFD recommendations; what they think is necessary for finding cross sector responses and possible solutions.

The article considers issues surrounding regulation and the correlation between it and what the insurance industry thinks is the best route forward for an effective market response to climate change.

Additionally, the piece considers the differing challenges for life and general insurance, the relationship with reinsurance, and what insurers need to take into account beyond financial modelling to adequately consider climate change risk.

The roundtable also considered the need to educate the general public as to the challenges the insurance industry faces about climate change.

Other questions vital to the issues that this innovative climate change session tackled included: 

• What are the difficult truths underpinning coverage in a world of increasing climate change?
• How does that response differ in a 1.5C climate warming environment vs a 4C world?
• How is a utilitarian answer to climate change should be worked out in the best interests of the market and its consumers?
• What are the best ways of managing the difficult cross-market conversations about climate change issues?
• How might different elements of climate change affect insured assets and how best to work with government and regulators regarding forward planning.
• How do you make businesses value the benefits of “natural capital” when the benefits are public and not private?
• What happens once Flood Re runs out in 2039? What needs to be done to insure lives and property?

In order to see the full report, please join up at the Financial Services Faculty Insurance page