Cat bonds one of the most prominent innovations in sustainable finance: IMF
According to a staff climate paper published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), catastrophe bonds are one of “the most prominent innovations in the field of sustainable finance in the last 15 years,” but the organisation believes more use of them is needed to cover burgeoning catastrophe and climate risks. Catastrophe bonds sit alongside green […]
Munich Re: Natural disaster review for first half of 2022
In the first half of 2022, natural disasters caused overall losses of US$ 65bn, with slightly more than half of these insured Extreme multi-day rainfall and severe flooding in Australia constituted the main loss burden for the insurance industry of at least US$ 3.7bn US once again country with highest weather-related losses Number of fatalities […]
Flood risk routinely underestimated, warns Marsh & McLennan Company (MMC)
Re/insurance broker Marsh McLennan has released its updated Flood Risk Index 2.0, which maps how a changing climate will shape flood risk in the future. The report warns that flooding is the most pervasive natural disaster, and yet its costs are routinely underestimated. And now, climate change, economic and demographic trends, and a chronic shortfall […]
UK Disaster Protection Centre: Humanitarian Insurance: Weighing the Options
Through the previous blogs in this series, we have started to unpick the role for risk transfer in a humanitarian context, and raised some of the ethical, practical, and principle-based reasons why humanitarian actors might think twice before using risk transfer tools like insurance [1]. The obvious next question for humanitarian actors and donors is […]
Global Insurance-Linked Securities Market Outlook
The Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS) market ended another year on a high note as the annual new issuance record was broken once again. This milestone was achieved in spite of a challenging year of catastrophe losses and with most market participants working from home. The ILS market continues to demonstrate its resilience with bonds issued in […]
Caribbean regional cat bond planned with World Bank support
Work is underway to develop a catastrophe bond for the Caribbean region with the support of the World Bank, with four countries currently engaged and as many as four others thought likely to join the effort. The initiative hopes to have a multi-country or regional Caribbean catastrophe bond ready for market by the time Jamaica’s […]
Climate change a far greater threat to global economy than Covid-19 pandemic amid rising intensity of heatwaves and floods, Swiss Re says
Climate change poses a bigger risk to long-term global economic growth than the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, according to Swiss Re. The world just had the third warmest June on record last month, with the average temperature 0.32 degrees Celsius higher than the average for the month in the three decades to 2020, according to Europe’s […]
Humanitarian insurance – ethical tightropes, trade-offs and unintended consequences
Insurance can be a useful tool for managing the unpredictable costs of disasters. This seems a good fit for a sector whose core business is responding to the human impacts of disasters, and often struggles to find the resources to meet unexpected peaks in demand. But humanitarians have a number of particularities linked to their […]
Disaster Risk Financing could help to mitigate climate risk in Africa
Only three percent of losses caused by drought, floods and tropical cyclones have been insured on the African continent. This emerged at a recent DZ BANK Capital Markets Conference held in Berlin. Insured losses on the African continent are close to 97 percent, which means, at best, only three percent of losses caused by drought, floods […]
Madagascar gets ARC parametric drought insurance payout as well
The country of Madagascar is the latest to benefit from a payout under its parametric drought insurance coverage from the African Risk Capacity (ARC), with almost $800k to be disbursed to the government. The African Risk Capacity Group and the African Development Bank presented the Government of Madagascar with a US $797,049 cheque as an […]