XL Catlin Executive Deputy Chairman Stephen Catlin is among the business and political leaders spearheading a global effort to make insurance more sustainable in the face of growing climate risks and natural disasters.

He’s a co-chairman of the Insurance Development Forum, which leaders of the United Nations, the World Bank Group and the insurance industry formed in Washington, D.C. earlier in April. The announcement followed a key note address from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at a planning conference with other industry CEOS that focused on how insurers can help establish better natural disaster planning and meet the UN’s goals for sustainable development.

Beyond making the global reinsurance market more sustainable, the IDF also wants to bring insurance industry risk measurement expertise into existing governmental disaster risk reduction programs and structures.

Catlin said his involvement in this project equates to ensuring a better future for younger generations.

“My grandchildren expect me to make responsible decisions that affect their future,” Catlin said in prepared remarks. “Insurers’ risk management skills help us assess natural disaster risk and can be exported to allow governments at all levels to reduce future losses by designing resilience into infrastructure projects; and in increasing the use of insurance as a pre-disaster economic resource to allow people to protect their families, property and assets.”

Catlin added that “risk identification, measurement, pooling and diversification are essential features of any successful insurance program and regulation must recognize their value and purpose.”

He said the IDF combines broader insurance industry resources reflected in membership of the International Insurance Society, The Geneva Association, the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation, and the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers.

Along with Catlin, the other IDF co-chairs are Joaquim Levy, managing director and World Bank Group chief financial officer/Brazil’s former minister of finance; and Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand and administrator of the United Nations Development Program.

In its first meeting, the IDF established four priority work areas: Understanding Risk; risk and insurance regulation, legislation and policy; risk sharing, transfer and response; and risk and resilience.

The IDF will use these areas to pursue specific projects, such as addressing challenges to wider insurance coverage, and the support of a Global Adaptation and Resilience Fund that would invest in technologies, innovation and facilities that promote resilience.

At the planning conference, the leadership disclosed the formation of seven working groups targeted to specific project goals. The groups – including the IDF – will report to the High Level Steering Group in September in the margins of the UN General Assembly.

Source: Insurance Development Forum