In August, the US Department of the Treasury announced that the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) will be requesting information from the insurance and climate sector as a response to President Biden’s May 2021 Executive Order on climate change. In this episode, Chris welcomes Dale Porfilio, Chief Insurance Officer of Insurance Information Institute (III), to talk about the FIO’s request. Dale oversees the Research and Education division, working closely with III subject-matter experts to develop data-driven industry insights and analyses. He shares his thoughts and III’s responses to the FIO.

Key Takeaways:

• What information is the Treasury Department and the FIO requesting for?
• Dale shares the key components of III’s response to the Federal Government.
• Dale believes that the NAIC’s ORSA model is a very strong model to regulate and understand climate change. He expands on this further. 
• The federal government can reinforce companies to price for coverage consistent with the expected cost. 
• Dale also talks about the importance of increasing the insured for flood risk. 
• Dale shares the three main points of the climate related priorities and activities that the FIO has requested for. 
• The FIO follows up with nineteen questions and uses the responses they get to figure out how they can use their influence to make a difference.
• What specific types of data are needed to measure and effectively assess the insurance sector’s exposure to climate related risks?
• Dale explains why III did not provide a solution to their response to the FOI on their question about standardized risk disclosures for climate change.
• Everyone (local and global) has a responsibility in making risk assessments and disclosures for climate change to work. 
• Dale shares his thoughts on the concerns of the FIO with client related issues or gaps in the regulation and supervision of insurers and their impact on financial stability.
• What are the realities that should be considered when identifying and assessing the potential disruption of insurance coverage in the US? Dale shares some examples.
• The bigger the residual market, the more chance there is for major disruptions in the US market.
• Dale talks about the increase in the exasperation of economic losses caused by the weather related disaster and why it’s happening.
• What is the insurance industry doing about this increase in economic losses?
• III thinks there is a lot of power in partnerships between the public and private sectors on climate change. Dale explains why.
• There are already good things that are happening but there are more things we can do together to better assess and measure climate risks.

Resources:

Catastropheresiliency.org

Email: crc@theinstitutes.org

Iii.org

Dale on LinkedIn