How insurers ready for catastrophe

Better business and resilience come with sophisticated innovations: Sustainalytics

Andrew Willis 9 April, 2020 | 1:39AM
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

 

 

Andrew Willis: It’s safe that say that human development comes with new challenges and evolving risks. With all the volatility and uncertainty in the world today, insurers have their hands full. Providing financial protections against disasters is a complex task – requiring innovative solutions that also align with United Nations development goals..

And what insurance companies are doing to prepare for the next risks aligns well with the interests of ESG investors, especially around building sustainable cities and communities, according to Jean-Francois Obregon and Justin Cheng at Sustainalytics.

To understand how these insurers prepare, Sustainalytics looked at risks around climate change. Insurers refer to these complex, sweeping, and expense dangers as catastrophic risks that demand sophisticated technological and financial solutions.

For instance, technological advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning help us predict potential of a flood, down to the postal code.

These technological innovations have been improving the efficacy of financial protections and products like ‘catastrophe bonds’ that payout, often faster than other forms of aid, when tragedy strikes. Even more significant perhaps, these technologies are enabling new formsof financial protections, such as ‘resilience bonds’, which can proactively address and incentivize the mitigation of risks that we can now better measure.

Putting a price tag on future events is no easy task, but it’s needed to ensure economic stability.

For Morningstar, I’m Andrew Willis.

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

About Author

Andrew Willis

Andrew Willis  is Senior Editor at Morningstar Canada. He previously produced content for Fidelity Investments and finance industry events for Euromoney Institutional Investor and has written in the past for Thomson Reuters and CNN. Follow him on Twitter @Andrew_M_Willis.

© Copyright 2024 Morningstar, Inc. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use        Privacy Policy       Disclosures        Accessibility