disaster risk

The commitment and capabilities of public and private sector entities is essential to closing the world’s ballooning protection gap, underlining the necessity of adequate insurance, reinsurance and alternative catastrophe risk financing, says Swiss Re.

The protection gap – underinsurance in emerging and developing economies and the gap between economic and insurance losses – has been a hot topic for the world’s leading reinsurance companies and brokers at this year’s Monte Carlo Rendez-vous.

International insurance and reinsurance markets, including alternative risk transfer instruments and insurance-linked securities (ILS), have a vital role to play in ensuring basic human rights for people against the world’s catastrophe risks, according to a recent study.

Insurance and reinsurance remained at the heart of recent discussions on disaster and climate risk reduction and resilience efforts at the United Nations, with regulatory reform highlighted as required to make risk transfer more available.

A further 400 million people in regions of the globe vulnerable to the perils of climate change related hazards are to have access to catastrophe or disaster risk insurance by the year 2020, according to G7 leaders.

The fight to reduce global economic losses from natural disasters “is next to impossible” as rising wealth, population and urbanisation levels drive the upward trend, according to leaders from AIR Worldwide and the UNISDR.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) aims to implement the ASEAN Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Programme, as access to risk capital and immediate liquidity post-disaster is recognised as increasingly important to the region’s growth.

A substantial number of the 100 most vulnerable cities in the world to the perils of natural disasters are situated in the Philippines, China, Japan and Bangladesh, according to recent findings from Verisk Maplecroft, a Verisk Analytics division.

Top insurance and reinsurance organisations have called on governments of the world to increase efforts to raise resilience against natural disasters, highlighting the gap between economic and insured losses as an area that the industry can support resilience goals.

The world is meeting in Sendai, Japan over the coming days to discuss disaster risk reduction and how the world becomes more resilient to them. Risk transfer and re/insurance remain vital components of any disaster risk reduction initiative.