Insurance Industry Policies and Climate Change

[Sigmetnow]

U.S.:   FEMA reverses decision to stop issuing new flood insurance policies during partial government shutdown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said on Friday it will resume issuing new flood insurance policies during the partial U.S. government shutdown, reversing a decision announced two days ago.

FEMA, which oversees the National Flood Insurance Program, said it was rescinding guidance issued on Wednesday that it would not be able to sell new policies during the shutdown unless Congress passes legislation reauthorizing the program.

“As of this evening, all NFIP insurers have been directed to resume normal operations immediately and advised that the program will be considered operational since December 21, 2018, without interruption,” FEMA said on its website.

The National Association of Realtors estimated the decision not to issue new policies could have disrupted up to 40,000 home sales each month.

The flood insurance program insures about 5 million homes and businesses.

The federal government has been partially shut down since Dec. 22 because of an impasse over President Donald Trump’s demand for $5 billion in taxpayer funding for a proposed border wall.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-shutdown-insurance/fema-reverses-decision-to-stop-issuing-new-flood-insurance-policies-idUSKCN1OS01Q

[sidd]

Here's someone selling a different kinda insurance: our old friends, the Pinkertons. The moved on from smashing union workers to other scams.

"Over the last decade or so, Pinkerton began noticing a growing set of anxieties among its corporate clients about distinctly contemporary plagues — active shooters, political unrest, climate disasters — and in response began offering data-driven risk analysis"

"“If a client has food and water and all the other stuff,” he said, “then they become a target.” "

"Pinkerton stands to compete more directly with traditional consulting firms like Deloitte, which offer pre- and postdisaster services (supply-chain monitoring, damage documentation, etc.), but which cannot, say, dispatch a helicopter full of armed guards to Guatemala in an afternoon. In theory, Pinkerton can do both — a fully militarized managerial class at corporate disposal."

"On the day the Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Puerto Rico in 2017, he received more than 30 calls from American businesses and multinationals. He wouldn’t go into detail but explained that many chief executives felt blind to the situation and effectively tendered a blank check if Pinkerton could provide security. Over the next few days, as the company deployed hundreds of agents to the island"

"The future looked pretty good for Pinkerton."

"The best outcome for these new data-driven Pinkertons is that this century lapses into the kind of lawlessness and disorder that makes it look more like the 19th"

"Ordinarily, Pinkerton bills on a relatively cheap hourly basis, but during a state of emergency, the rate soars, something Paz Larach compared to Uber’s surge pricing."

"You aren’t prepared enough, and the government is too clumsy to save you."

I guess they haven't really changed. Still breaking heads in the service of the rich. Read the whole thing:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/magazine/climate-change-pinkertons.html

I think their rich clients haven't figured out that in the event of social breakdown, their own guards will slit their throats, rape and kill all the women and loot their provisions. Counldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

sidd
 

[Tom_Mazanec]

Insurance Companies Are Bailing on California Because of Wildfires
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/insurance-companies-bailing-on-california-because-of-wildfire-risk-874579/

California is facing yet another real estate-related crisis, but we’re not talking about its sky-high home prices. According to newly released data, it’s simply become too risky to insure houses in big swaths of the wildfire-prone state.

Last winter when we wrote about home insurance rates possibly going up in the wake of California’s massive, deadly fires, the insurance industry representatives we interviewed were skeptical. They noted that the stories circulating in the media about people in forested areas losing their homeowners’ insurance was based on anecdotes, not data. But now, the data is in and it’s really happening: Insurance companies aren’t renewing policies in areas climate scientists say are likely to burn in giant wildfires in coming years.

[bluesky]

It seems the reinsurance industry is becoming a bit more vocal about climate change.
On June 17, 2019. the CEO of Munich Re (largest reinsurer in the world) interviewed by the FT advocated for a significantly higher carbon price in the EU to push fossile fuel industry into obsolescence, while today the CEO of SCOR (4th largest reinsurer) said that evidence for rapid climate change was  "absolutely compelling" and  call for the reinsurance industry for taking an active part in the debate, also mentioning that large part of the word could become uninsurable.
 Let's see how long it will take for the reinsurance industry to pressurise the primary insurance market and then to feed into more stringent climate related regulation in every aspect where the insurance can influence the policy, I still think that the movement has been extremely slow so far, not sure it will get to speed before a real outlier catastrophe event happens and feed into major insurance  losses.

https://www.reinsurancene.ws/evidence-for-rapid-climate-change-absolutely-compelling-says-kessler/

[blumenkraft]

I'm waiting for the Munich Re to lobby Merkel for a long time. With their kind of skin in the game, one would think they would...

[Tom_Mazanec]

Natural disaster spike to drive 2020 insurance rate rise
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/09/03/natural-disaster-spike-drive-2020-insurance-rate-rise/

Two years of higher-than-expected losses from natural catastrophes are likely to prompt average reinsurance rate renewal rises of up to 5% in January, ratings agencies said.

After several years of falling rates due to competition and fewer natural disasters, steep losses from hurricanes, typhoons and wildfires in 2017 and 2018 are driving a reversal.

And as Hurricane Dorian ravages the Bahamas and bears down on the US, both Fitch and Standard & Poor’s said some rates could jump much higher.

[bluesky]

Natural disaster spike to drive 2020 insurance rate rise
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/09/03/natural-disaster-spike-drive-2020-insurance-rate-rise/

Two years of higher-than-expected losses from natural catastrophes are likely to prompt average reinsurance rate renewal rises of up to 5% in January, ratings agencies said.

After several years of falling rates due to competition and fewer natural disasters, steep losses from hurricanes, typhoons and wildfires in 2017 and 2018 are driving a reversal.

And as Hurricane Dorian ravages the Bahamas and bears down on the US, both Fitch and Standard & Poor’s said some rates could jump much higher.

Still a relatively  small increase if we take into account that  between 2012 and 2016 reinsurance pricing kept  decreasing due to low  catastrophe losses and capital competition from alternative capital (capital coming from outside the insurance industry  like pension funds, investments  funds, hedge  funds, who were looking and still are looking for higher yield in reinsurance  and risk diversification due to very  low yield of governement and corporate bonds...). Reinsurance price only start  increasing for good this year  and the likely 2020  increase might not even get back to 2011 12 reinsurance  rates...So will not discourage people to rebuild or build in risky areas

[bluesky]

I'm waiting for the Munich Re to lobby Merkel for a long time. With their kind of skin in the game, one would think they would...

Is this happening through Olaf Scholz,  German Minister of Finance, is EU tax to change to a more greener approach?  (I  will wait to see whether low cost airlines do not manage to water down the project and Poland does not manage to rally the Visagrad group for a veto over the planned increase in carbon tax)

(maybe this should be in another thread)

https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/13/drastic-steps-needed-to-stop-climate-change-germanys-scholz-says


"The European Union is considering new energy taxes, including on the aviation sector, to meet its climate targets, top officials said on Friday, with Germany calling for “drastic steps” to reduce carbon emissions.
Over the last decade, EU countries have led a global shift towards renewable energy and set up the world’s largest emissions trading system to price carbon and reduce reliance on more polluting fuels.
However, the bloc’s rules on energy taxation have not changed for more than 15 years.
They are “outdated and poorly adapted to climate change challenges and developments in energy policy at EU level”, according to a document that EU finance ministers will discuss at meetings in Helsinki on Friday and Saturday.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire pointed the finger at the treatment reserved for the EU aviation sector, which benefits from tax exemptions and other waivers to compete with non-EU airlines.
He said the sector should contribute more to fight climate change “either with taxes or with the purchase of more allowances” from the EU emissions trading system.
At the same meeting, German finance minister Olaf Scholz said drastic steps were needed to counter climate change and urged an international approach on the matter.
“We are in the process of finding out how we can limit CO2 consumption in agriculture, small businesses or transport,” Scholz said.
The bloc’s top economic commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, told reporters that options also included a carbon tax and an overhaul of energy taxation.
Among possible measures listed in a document prepared by the Finnish presidency of the EU are higher minimum tax rates on energy, fossil fuel levies and the end of waivers for the air and sea transport sectors.
Ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions by at least 50% by 2030 are part of the agenda of the new European Commission which will take office in November.
A confidential work programme prepared in July by Commission officials before the appointment of the commission’s president-designate Ursula von der Leyen envisages legislative proposals to end tax exemptions for air and sea transport by early 2020 and a review of minimum tax rates on energy products by the end of next year."

[blumenkraft]

Well, the Greens in Germany gained some ground recently. I think CDU politicians are in fear of losing the majority in the next election which is a reasonable analysis.

So the CDU is doing what they do, they overtake their opposition on their message.

They went totally anti-immigrant to fight the AfD in 2015.

So what they are doing now IMHO is trying to be more green than the Greens to fight them.

[Tom_Mazanec]

The Climate Crisis Is Poised to Make Huge Swaths of America Totally Uninsurable
https://www.thedailybeast.com/climate-redlining-could-soon-make-millions-of-us-homes-totally-uninsurable?ref=home

“People are going to be trapped because once it’s uninsurable, good luck selling the house,” one climate expert cautioned.

[sidd]

Bonds, insurance,  climate risk: "a cataclysmic issue"

"Going forward, cities that lack the resources to invest in climate remediation may see their credit ratings decline as result"

"Those longer-term risks “are not priced into the market today,”  "

" He cited the difficulty of evaluating the flood risk for a regional mall that sits atop a hill. Whereas the mall itself might not be at risk for flooding, “how do people get to you? Your inventory will be fine, but nobody will be there to buy it,” he said. “It’s more of an issue than just your physical building.” "

"damage from rare extreme weather events did not have a significant effect on value because buildings almost always could be repaired. But with catastrophic storms and floods becoming more frequent in some areas, the value of the underlying land will be at risk as well. Insurers are not going to protect property owners against the risk that they will not be able to find a future buyer, he said."

“By the third flood, prospective buyers know you have a waterlogged building,” Glendon said. “And you lose land value.”

"The rising threat to value from climate change will not be borne by insurance companies because they can re-price coverage, Glendon said. “The risk is for the people who hold the mortgages.” "

https://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/investors-and-bond-rating-analysts-are-working-to-quantify-risks-from-climate-change/

sidd

[vox_mundi]

Banks Will Subject $2.9 Trillion in Assets to Climate Testing
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/09/23/banks-will-subject-2-9-trillion-assets-climate-testing/

Mortgages and other products will be assessed using a global standard for the first time, allowing banks to encourage behaviour change

More than 50 financial institutions representing $2.9 trillion in assets have pledged to unveil the carbon impact of their investments and loans on Monday.

The cohort of banks, which include the US Amalgamated Bank and the Dutch ASN and Triodos Banks, will assess and disclose the greenhouse gas emissions generated by their financial products as part of the industry-led initiative Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF).

While the sum is but a fragment of the $386 trillion-high global stock of financial capital, it represents the single largest carbon disclosure initiative within the financial sector. It also marks the first time the financial sector will apply a global carbon accounting standard, with methods previously specific to the US or Netherlands.

... “Our experience in the Netherlands is that measuring and tracking climate impact drives concrete action and change,” Kees van Dijkhuizen CEO of the Dutch ABN AMRO said. “At ABN AMRO, PCAF helped us understand that our 800,000 residential mortgages are one of the areas that have the highest carbon impact. With that knowledge, we now promote mortgages that incentivize customers to take energy efficiency measures.

[sidd]

Re: "Mortgages and other products will be assessed ... "

Miami realtors and homeowners ain't gonna like that ...

sidd

[bluesky]

In a recent international meeting of reinsurance industry organised by a rating agency in Bermuda, they seemed to have had quite a few comments on climate catastrophe related to climate change notably from Brian Duperreault, the CEO of AIG one of the largest property and casualty insurer, and from the CEO of SCOR America, the North American branch of the 4th world reinsurer... let's see whether they concretely do something about it. Among related topic, reinsurance pricing, modelling or climate related catastrophe risk, the need for collecting more data  (info from a short article released by the rating agency)

[bluesky]

(below was also posted in 2019 hurricane season)

Quote from: vox_mundi on November 11, 2019, 10:12:14 PM
"Hurricanes Have Become Bigger and More Destructive for the U.S., Study Finds
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-hurricanes-bigger-destructive.html

A new study by researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Aslak Grinsted, Peter Ditlevsen and Jens Hesselbjerg shows that hurricanes have become more destructive since 1900, and the worst of them are more than three times as frequent now than 100 years ago.

Aslak Grinsted el al., "Normalized US hurricane damage estimates using area of total destruction, 1900−2018," PNAS (2019)."



The Insurance Link Security blog artemis.bm has written a long article about the Aslak Grinsted, Peter Ditlevsen and Jens Hesselbjerg  (Niels Bohr Institute) research paper on increasing frequency of more destructive hurricane published recently in PNAS. A few more insight, (of course the most important is the frequency of the most destructive hurricane has increased by 330% in a century),  the article was edited by the highly respected hurricane scientist expert   Kerry A. Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while the research paper received the backing of  Jim Kossin (NOAA), who was not involved in the research, as commenting on this study, “Their result is consistent with expected changes in the proportion of the strongest hurricanes and is also consistent with the increased frequency of very slow-moving storms that make landfall in the U.S.”

The artemis.bm blog is widely read in the re insurance and insurance industry, which will help to rapidly spread the result of this key research paper among the catastrophe modellers and the modelling agencies on which rely the insurance industry, and maybe less relying on the mantra of  of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation in positive mode since the mid 1990ies supposedly justifying (for some not all) the higher  activity of intense hurricane since then.

https://www.artemis.bm/news/study-finds-hurricanes-more-destructive-most-damaging-more-frequent/

The chart below shows the frequency of events destroying a certain amount of land-mass, the area of total destruction (ATD). The white represents the most severe hurricanes and shows a 3.3x increase in frequency (from the artemis article , and likely from A. Grinsted et al research paper)