To assist property insurers in reducing losses and speeding up recovery from natural disasters, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) adopted the first-ever National Climate Resilience Strategy for Insurance.

Developed under the coordination of the NAIC’s Climate and Resiliency Task Force, co-chaired by Alaska Division of Insurance Director Lori K. Wing-Heier and California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, the strategy gathers insights from insurance regulators across the nation.

An essential aspect of the strategy, according to the NAIC, is the states’ Property & Casualty Market Intelligence Data Call (PCMI) to collect and analyze data covering more than 80 percent of the U.S. property insurance market by premium volume.

“Our property markets and the consumers we work to protect are under pressure. The PCMI data call and the National Climate Resilience Strategy for Insurance will help us close protection gaps and make every community stronger and more resilient,” said Director Wing-Heier. “This strategy document brings together many of our existing workstreams, focuses our work on pre-disaster risk mitigation, and will provide important coordination among U.S. state regulators,” Wing-Heier added.

Faster and more effective risk reduction by state insurance regulators is the goal, in order to ensure insurance availability for communities facing climate risks.

“Closing the protection gap means hardening properties and continuing to vigorously monitor solvency protection oversight,” said NAIC President and Connecticut Insurance Commissioner Andrew N. Mais. “As insurance regulators are seeing in our states and territories, this is a national problem that calls for a national strategy to ensure that insurance remains available and reliable.”

Announced March 8, the PCMI data call will gather data from more than 400 property insurers operating locally and across the country to guide state insurance regulators on the status of their individual property markets and the nation overall.

“U.S. states are in the forefront of making safer communities to withstand extreme weather and climate change, which is critical to keeping insurance available for all,” said Commissioner Lara. “Our national climate resilience strategy puts reducing risks and protecting solvency at the center of our work to protect consumers.”

The NAIC National Climate Resilience Strategy addresses state insurance regulators’ plans to:

• Collect data to help identify and close protection gaps.
• Create a blueprint for the future of flood insurance.
• Leverage the recently created Catastrophe Modeling Center of Excellence.
• Create new resilience tools.
• Advocate for pre-disaster mitigation funding.
• Improve solvency tools, such as scenario analysis.

The Climate and Resiliency Task Force adopted the NAIC National Climate Resilience Strategy for Insurance in 2023 and exposed it for public comment before it was adopted by the full Membership at the NAIC Spring National Meeting on March 18, 2024.