NAIC Adopts National Climate Resiliency Strategy

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) - which coordinates among state insurance regulators to provide expertise, data, and analysis that help them advance effective regulations and ensure consumer protection - has adopted the organization's first national climate resilience strategy.

Developed by the NAIC Climate and Resiliency Task Force and adopted by the full Membership at the NAIC Spring National Meeting on March 18, the strategy aims to "drive faster and more effective risk reduction by state insurance regulators to ensure that insurance continues to be available and reliable as a crucial backbone to communities facing climate risks" via the following priorities:

• 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

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."

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, who co-chairs the NAIC Climate and Resiliency Task Force, added "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. Our national climate resilience strategy puts reducing risks and protecting solvency at the center of our work to protect consumers."

The Climate Resiliency Strategy will draw on the recently announced Property & Casualty Market Intelligence Data Call (PCMI), which will collect and analyze data from more than 400 homeowners insurers across the U.S.

"Our property markets and the consumers we work to protect are under pressure," said Alaska Division of Insurance Director and NAIC Climate and Resiliency Task Force co-chair Lori K. Wing-Heier. "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. 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."

Source: NAIC, https://content.naic.org/article/naic-adopts-first-national-climate-resilience-strategy-insurance-close-coverage-gaps-and-improve