Insurance and Reinsurance: Sharing Risks, Building Resilience
Tuesday, 9 April; 3-4:30 p.m. CEST
For centuries, the insurance sector has fueled economic growth by transferring and sharing risks across institutions and investors. To do this, insurance has innovated in how we conceive, identify, and quantify hazards, even as insurance costs have acted as an incentive for reducing exposure to hazards. Indeed, modern economies evolved with and require insurance as a backstop and foundation.
Climate change is altering these arrangements in profound ways. Fire hazards, flash droughts, sea-level rise, and expanding floodplains are just a few signs of a tilting landscape. As new risks appear, so do new demands and novel roles for insurance and reinsurance globally. At the same time, little consensus has emerged in how we identify, interpret, and reduce the threat of uncertain, emerging hazards. And the shifting nature of risk assessment also raises concerns about how we regulate insurance and how to best balance public sector and commercial instruments. Water-related hazards are at the center of this discussion given the sensitivity of the water cycle to climate change. In some cases, commercial options are retreating even as climate impacts accelerate. Water-based resilience may also have the potential to drive systemic solutions across sectors. Should insurance play a role in advancing new roles and responses?
In this webinar, we will actively explore the state of play around both risk and resilience in the insurance sector, for consumers and regulators of insurance, and for the broader economy. The ideas we present here are intended to feed into the overall webinar series and into a policy guidance for early 2025.
About the WR4ER Webinar Series
The WR4ER webinar series underscores resilience as a new economic principle often overlooked in traditional economic analyses. As suggested by Nobel laureate William Nordhaus and other scholars, climate-induced shocks can reverberate through economies, affecting productivity, resource availability, and overall economic stability. We highlight the inadequacies of conventional economic tools in addressing climate uncertainty and propose innovative frameworks that embrace risk, uncertainty, and social dimensions to inform strategic adaptation investments.
In many cases, water resources are emerging as both as a systemic hazard exacerbating climate vulnerabilities and as the currency we spend through economic systems to purchase resilience and maximize coherence and efficacy.
Audience
The series targets macroeconomists, economic planners, central bankers, finance and development ministries, insurance and reinsurance programs, commercial banks, credit rating agencies, city planners, corporations reliant on critical infrastructure, and infrastructure funders and designers. Through engaging discussions, case studies, and expert insights, the series endeavors to foster a deeper understanding of resilience as a fundamental economic imperative and equip stakeholders with practical strategies to navigate the complex challenges posed by climate change.
Co-convenors
Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Australian Water Partnership, Deltares, French Ministry Ecology, Energy, and Territories, French Water Partnership, German Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Global Commons Alliance (GCA), Global Resilience Partnership (GRP), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), US State Department, US Treasury Department, Veolia, Water Policy Group, Wetlands International, World Bank