Report points to insurance industry’s vulnerability to climate change

Don Jergler in the Insurance Journal: A report out Thursday urges the insurance industry to act to protect itself and the community against the increasing frequency of extreme weather due to climate change. In short, the report, its authors and those endorsing it want more efforts made to calculate climate change into risk management.

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones and Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler were among those who endorsed the report’s recommendations, and Kreidler spoke during a conference call with the press on Thursday on behalf of the report, urging a change by the industry and his fellow regulators.

The report, “Stormy Future for U.S. Property/Casualty Insurers: The Growing Costs and Risks of Extreme Weather Events,” provides tools for insurance regulators and investors to engage industry and protect consumers, its authors say.

Ceres, the nonprofit that advocates for environmental leadership, authored the report, which builds on this summer’s devastating drought and record high temperatures and notes that extreme weather events pose a great risk to U.S. property/casualty insurers, which were hard hit by last year’s $32 billion in insured losses....

Flow of Merced River after Autumn's rain storm in Yosemite Valley, shot by Brocken Inaglory, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license