Worldchanging, Lloyd’s & Climate Change

• We don’t know exactly what impact climate change will have. But we do know that it presents society and the economy with an increasing level of uncertainty as it seeks to manage its risk.
• We believe that it is time for the insurance industry to take a more leading role in understanding and managing the impact of climate change.
• This means that the industry can no longer treat climate change as some peripheral workstream, simply to tick the regulatory and compliance box, or to support its public relations strategy.
• Instead, understanding and responding to it must become “business as usual” for insurers and those they work with. Failure to take climate change into account will put companies at risk from future legal actions from their own shareholders, their investors and clients.
• Climate change must inform underwriting strategy — from the pricing of risk to the wording of policies.
• It must guide and counsel business strategy — including business development and planning.
• And it must lie at the heart of a new impetus to engage with the wider world through meaningful, tangible partnerships to mitigate risk — bringing corporate and social responsibility plans to life.
• The insurance industry must now seize the opportunity to make a difference, not just to the future of our own industry, but to the future of society.

There’s not really much I can add to this, so just go and read it in full.

We’re all tree-huggers now, like it or not.

With thanks to Joel Makower at Worldchanging.