From Risk to Opportunity 2007: Insurer Responses to Climate Change

Global warming and the growing incidence of extreme weather events pose an enormous challenge to the insurance industry. This summer’s devastating floods in Europe and wildfires in the West are only the latest reminder of why investors and consumers are concerned about the impacts of climate change on insurers.

But while climate change poses potential threats, it also creates vast new business opportunities. Just as the industry historically asserted its leadership to minimize risks from building fires and earthquakes, insurers have a huge opportunity today to develop creative loss-prevention solutions and products that will reduce climate-related losses for consumers, governments and insurers, and lower the emissions causing global warming.

This report focuses on the significant progress made by insurers to develop these new products and services. It identifies 422 real-world examples from 190 insurers, reinsurers, brokers and insurance organizations from 26 countries. The findings of this latest study represents a growth of more than 100 percent over the 192 products and services that were identified in a similar report done by Ceres in August 2006.