Bank of England to intensify climate change scrutiny of insurers

[TexasTowelie]

LONDON (Reuters) - Insurers in Britain face being tested to see how they could cope with fallout from climate change on their balance sheets, the Bank of England’s insurance regulator said on Thursday.

David Rule said the Bank was conducting “stock-take” meetings with around 10 insurers on their responses to climate change and planned to issue a policy statement later this year on follow-up actions.

“I don’t think we envisage addressing climate risk through Pillar 1,” Rule told a City & Financial conference, referring to an insurer’s mandatory capital buffer.

“We are looking more at disclosure,” Rule said.

He said that stress and scenario testing was “fertile ground” for thinking how firms assess how exposed they are to climate change.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boe-insurance-regulations/bank-of-england-to-intensify-climate-change-scrutiny-of-insurers-idUSKCN1J30UO

[Denzil_DC]

1. I thought most insurers had been pretty much up to speed on climate change for years.

I worked on a book about sustainable/low-impact housing quite a while back, and it quoted insurers' own projections of the possible future effects - they didn't make encouraging reading, especially the part about "once in 100-year" storms occurring in Aberdeen every fortnight by the late 2000s (cheery crowd, insurers).

[T_i_B]

2. Business in the real world has to be rational

Which means treating science appropriately rather than pretending it's all a hoax because it doesn't fit some hooray henry's worldview.