Humanitarian insurance – ethical tightropes, trade-offs and unintended consequences
Insurance can be a useful tool for managing the unpredictable costs of disasters. This seems a good fit for a sector whose core business is responding to the human impacts of disasters, and often struggles to find the resources to meet unexpected peaks in demand. But humanitarians have a number of particularities linked to their […]
Disaster Risk Financing could help to mitigate climate risk in Africa
Only three percent of losses caused by drought, floods and tropical cyclones have been insured on the African continent. This emerged at a recent DZ BANK Capital Markets Conference held in Berlin. Insured losses on the African continent are close to 97 percent, which means, at best, only three percent of losses caused by drought, floods […]
Swiss ILS fund managers collaborating on ESG transparency
Artemis has learned that a group of Switzerland-based insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment fund managers have been collaborating to develop a data transparency proposal to help enhance environmental, social and governance (ESG) in the ILS market. After what we understand to be a few months of work, an initial ESG data request file template has now […]
London workshop with Twelve Capital and African Risk Capacity
Climate change leads to a larger protection gap of which 96% is in the developing world* Twelve Capital held a workshop with high calibre market players to discuss how natural catastrophe risks can be transferred to financial markets for disaster relief in emerging markets. Against the backdrop of Impact Investing some highlights covered were: – […]
ESG policies becoming critical in private capital markets
Investment funds in the private capital markets sector increasingly need to be seen to be quickly moving towards, or having already implemented, a rigorous environmental, social and governance (ESG) policy, or they could risk falling outside of many institutional investor’s consideration. Environmental, social, governance (ESG) considerations are becoming a significant part of the investor side […]
Index-based risk transfer essential to key societal issues: Speedwell Climate
Index-based risk transfer has a key societal role to play, in providing protection to support issues such as the renewable energy transition, covering extreme weather catastrophe events, and helping support access to scarce resources, newly renamed Speedwell Climate has said. Speedwell Weather Ltd. and its associated companies have been serving the need of parametric, or […]
SBAI publishes responsible investment guidance for ILS funds
The Standards Board for Alternative Investments (SBAI) has published a new guidance document that covers responsible investment within the insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund management industry. The SBAI had already ramped up its focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) alongside responsible investing within various asset management segments. This included the publication of toolkits to help […]
Adding the ‘S’ to ESG: why insurers can make a difference
ESG (environmental, social, corporate governance) factors present unique challenges for participants in the insurance sector. Unexpected claims, regulatory requirements and investor demands are just three challenges it faces. But the industry is uniquely positioned to support the world’s transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy–—while also developing increasingly sophisticated risk transfer tools to help manage this […]
Centre for Disaster Protection adds World Bank ILS expertise
The UK-funded Centre for Disaster Protection has announced a number of new additions to its team, with an experienced disaster risk financing expert joining it from her most recent role at the World Bank, where she had worked on catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS) arrangements. The Centre for Disaster Protection was launched in 2017 […]
Speed key to capitalise on cat bond spreads multi-year high: Twelve
For investors considering entering the catastrophe bond market, or increasing their allocations to it, during this period of multi-year high cat bond spreads, “speed is of the essence” according to investment manager Twelve Capital, as this opportunity won’t last for long. In a new paper, Twelve Capital explains its view as to what has driven […]