The Director-General of Insurance Europe, Michaela Koller, remarked, ''The science is unambiguous: climate change is causing more regular and severe natural disasters. In 2022 alone, global losses hit USD 275bn. Without significantly cutting the world's carbon emissions, this trend will accelerate. This will have many negative consequences, one of which will be that insuring against the effects of climate change will become increasingly costly.''
She added, ''Besides reducing emissions, it is equally important to step up adaptation efforts in order to reduce as much as possible the effects of climate change. Here, the main responsibility is with public authorities, but the insurance industry is committed to playing its part, and many insurers and insurance associations are in fact already involved in a whole range of initiatives to accelerate adaptation”.
Across Europe, insurance companies are contributing to the mitigation and adaptation of climate change. In particular as the largest group of institutional investors in Europe with over €10 trillion in assets, the insurance industry is supporting the sustainable transition. The industry also continues to support climate adaptation, raising awareness on the need to increase disaster resilience, sharing risk expertise and working with governments to maximise insurance coverage, for instance by building effective public-private partnerships.
More information about how Europe’s insurance and reinsurance industry is contributing to the fight against climate change and to meeting European and international climate objectives can be found on Insurance Europe's Sustainability Hub.
On 13 December 4pm-6pm CET, politicians, academics, insurance industry leaders and EU representatives will gather together for an online and in-person debate on how to build resilience among communities.
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