The carbon footprint profile of a P&C insurer
The global property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry is a massive 1.6 trillion dollar industry and a key part of the financial system offering financial protection and risk mitigation to individuals and businesses.
As the recently established Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA) points out, the insurance industry has an important role in the transition to a net-zero global economy. There are several ways an insurance company can participate in this important work.
First of all, insurers can measure and reduce their own direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They can also work towards reducing indirect GHG emissions that arise from the value chain, the so called scope 3 GHG emissions. Finally, they can also make climate-oriented decisions about the types of risks and businesses they are willing to insure.
As is the case with most service companies, the direct GHG emissions of an insurer are typically small compared to the indirect emissions arising from the value chain. In other words, it's the scope 3 emissions that offer the most impactful sustainability opportunities for an insurer.
In order to show how the carbon footprint profile of a P&C insurance company typically looks like, we've developed an easy-to-use app that quickly calculates a rough approximation of the GHG emissions across the key areas of a P&C insurer based on simple inputs. The calculation uses industry average emission intensity factors and is therefore only meant to be used for illustration purposes.
We'd love to get your comments and thoughts about the app and if you'd like to hear more about our approach to reducing GHG emissions that arise from the value chain – in particular the emissions linked to the insurance exposure – please don't hesitate to contact us.