For property and casualty (P&C) insurance companies, CO2 emissions stem from four different sources. The insurer’s own operations. The emissions from the insurer’s own operations arise from vehicles owned by the insurer, energy consumption in facilities, business travel, employee commuting, waste generated in operations, and… Read More »Understanding CO2 emissions in the insurance value chain
On March 24th, Norrsken House and City of Stockholm hosted the first Stockholm Impact Meetup, an event to showcase the best of the Stockholm impact community. ClaimsCarbon was one of the seven exciting and impactful startups featured in the event.
Given the challenges the world is facing in reaching net zero, it’s great to see that many large insurance companies are showing leadership and setting strong examples by disclosing ambitious climate goals.
Forerunners will be in a unique position to meet the needs of stakeholders and attract new customers through public disclosure of emissions, progress toward climate targets, and demonstration of environmental stewardship.
As the demands for climate action intensify, insurers are also stepping up their game and trying to find pathways towards net zero. When we talk to people at insurance companies, their concerns and hindrances on this topic largely stem from a sense of lack of alignment. In this article we will briefly discuss each alignment challenge and propose some solutions on how to handle them.
ESG and sustainability in general is a broad topic covering much more than just climate related questions. We would argue, however, that of all the potential sustainability related ambitions, combating climate change must be the most important one. Our vision is that the global insurance industry will reach net zero emissions in 2040. Therefore, while we think it’s important and commendable that insurers adopt the Principles for Sustainable Insurance, we also recommend that insurers seek out and implement additional frameworks that have a more climate specific agenda.
We fully agree with BCG’s assessment that insurers have a great opportunity to become leaders in the climate fight due to their expertise in assessing and taking risk. We were also happy to see that they had identified several impact opportunities for insurers, which largely overlapped with the opportunities we’ve described previously. To seize the opportunity, insurers must address a number of key questions and formulate a compelling climate strategy that cuts through and crystallizes – for all stakeholders – what the company aims to do.