Translate global risks to a local level

More of the stakeholders affected by weather risk—be they policyholders, municipalities, farmers or brokers—must be empowered with better information to respond to climate change which will, in turn, help to close the protection gap.

This is according to Emmett Soldati, chief product officer of Weather Analytics, speaking at Guy Carpenter’s Baden-Baden symposium.An important part of bridging the insurance gap, Soldati suggested, is making these individuals and bodies more aware of the uncertainty surrounding events and losses, how this might change, and what it could mean for them at a local level.

“What we can say about climate change and global warming is that as the certainty increases that our world is warming at an unprecedented level, the uncertainty of how that will play out at local stages is also increasing,” Soldati said.
Local individuals and companies must therefore be empowered to be more resilient against this changing risk landscape.

“The key to resilience—not just insuring and restoring against losses but also mitigating and protecting—is to recognise that the transfer of information down to local actors is central to responding to change,” he added.

Soldati believes the insurance sector is very comfortable with the idea that risk is inherently local, and that brokers—particularly in the UK and Europe—have keen insights into the way that risks play out locally so that they can underwrite and price more effectively. However, he is certain that as the climate changes, the hot zones of risk change too.

At Weather Analytics, different environmental risks with the highest resolution and highest granularity are analysed to uncover insights at local levels on a global scale.

For example, Soldati will look to detail and process a great deal of information about what is on the ground including what the land cover is like, how human behaviour might play a part, where properties are located and any flood defence systems.

In order to better deal with these risks, local actors must be given the right kind of information and incentives to change their behaviour, he said.

“While all risk remains local, it’s we who operate at a macro level that need to recognise this information for local actors,” he concluded.