The Insurance Industry Wants a World That Is Sustainable and Insurable
Insurance companies are uniquely positioned to address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) challenges such as climate change and human rights issues in their roles as risk managers, risk carriers, and investors. (...)
Much of this work is being steered by the Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI) initiative, launched by the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) in 2012. The Principles serve as a global framework for the insurance industry to address ESG risks and opportunities. The PSI are now backed by more than 80 insurance and stakeholder organizations worldwide, including insurers representing approximately 20% of world premiums, and $14 trillion (USD) in assets under management.
According to Butch Bacani, who leads the PSI at the UN, “the number and the momentum of insurance industry initiatives that promote sustainable development have been growing over the years. They span multiple issues, from increasing access to insurance and building disaster resilience, to mitigating and adapting to climate change." (...)
That is why the PSI, together with the World Bank Group and one of the world’s leading reinsurers, Munich Re, recently launched an international study to develop ESG guiding principles for surety bond underwriting for infrastructure projects. “Although this project does not exclusively focus on climate change risk — it takes a much wider look at environmental, social and governance risks instead — it is an important step towards the integration of ESG risks into underwriting. This is important because of the exposure of infrastructure projects to a range of ESG risks,” says Dr. Astrid Zwick, Head of Corporate Responsibility at Munich Re.
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李莎·索洛德尔 | 创始人兼管理合伙人 | R3i资本 | 深科技成长与早期风险投资 | 她爱科技 | SG、LU、TX的元宇宙加速器中心 | 教育者 | 老兵
9 年Very interesting article! Thank you for sharing Olivier. Interestingly i ran a risk clinic in Singapore yesterday on reputation risk management in a crisis with 30 of the region's top Risk Managers. With more than 50% of our company's valuation based on intangibles, including brand and reputation... and only 20-30% of attendees risk registers actually insurable, this appears to be a massive opportunity for innovation in product development for the insurance industry!