23 Apr 2012: Report Insurance Companies Face Increased Risks
from Warming If the damages related to climate change mount in
the coming decades, insurance companies may face the prospect of
paying larger disaster claims and being dragged into global
warming lawsuits. But many firms, especially in the U.S., have
barely begun to confront the risks. Given that insurers are
likely to be among the first companies affected by climate
change, you might expect the industry to be better prepared than
most. But that is not how it appears to many analysts,
regulators, and industry representatives, who say insurers are
showing a lack of urgency on the twin threats of massive future
damage claims from weather-related events, and the prospect of
growing climate change-related litigation. A report published
last September by Ceres , a Boston-based coalition of investors
and environmental groups, puts it starkly. Surveying the
disclosures of 88 U.S. insurance companies to the National
Association of Insurance Commissioners (N