The insurance protection gap

In a string of research reports, the World Bank Group and European Commission call on governments across Europe to utilise more in the way of disaster risk transfer and insurance to reduce the pressure from weather and natural perils on budgets, including the use of catastrophe bonds to access capital market investors for reinsurance risk […]

An innovative parametric insurance product that provides protection to fund repairs following storm damage to coral reefs in Hawaii has been renewed and its coverage expanded, while global reinsurance firm Munich Re is again backing the cover, which is arranged by WTW.

An innovative parametric insurance program has been taken across the globe to cover a South pacific coral reef in the Fiji archipelago, with broker WTW saying it will provide up to US $450,000 of cover for reef restoration and community assistance if cyclones hit.

A few signs emerged at the recent January 1st 2024 reinsurance renewals that bode well for protection buyers as we move through this year and into the next, as broker Aon highlighted that appetite is returning for some of the more challenged products and areas of the tower.

A new reinsurance fund has been launched to support delivery of innovative insurance products to protect smallholder farmers in Africa, with One Acre Fund Re expected to become a source of capacity to back what will likely be largely parametric risk transfer instruments.

New technologies can serve as a bridge between the re/insurance industry and the world’s most vulnerable, and alongside the use of insurance-linked securities (ILS) and innovative solutions such as parametrics, can help to close the global protection gap, according to the Insurance Development Forum (IDF).

In a perhaps surprising turn of events, the opening hours of the COP28 climate talks today have seen a landmark agreement to operationalise and provide initial funding for the much-discussed loss and damage fund, that is designed to help the countries that are most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

Having spent time in Bermuda and attended the recent PwC Insurance Summit on the island, the equity analyst team at BMO Capital Markets has concluded that the insurance and reinsurance industry is suffering a lack of confidence in its risk models, which they say has been a key driver in capital flight and retrenching higher.

Delivering a speech in Canberra today, Andrew Hall, the Executive Director and CEO of the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) explained that insurance and reinsurance markets are repricing risk globally and for reinsurers, writing risk in Australia is no longer seen as the diversifying hedge it used to be.

A new report calls on the world to implement risk sharing systems, such as parametric triggers in insurance, reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) such as catastrophe bonds, as a central pillar of the Loss and Damage architecture required to protect the most vulnerable nations against climate, weather and natural disasters.