UK Analysis - Climate Breakdown Will Make Insurance Unaffordable For Those Who Will Need It Most

[hatrack]

The climate crisis will make insurance unaffordable for many people, particularly those in regional areas, as the damage from extreme weather events increases, a consumer group has warned. In a submission to the royal commission into natural disasters sparked by last summer’s unprecedented bushfires, the Consumer Action Law Centre calls for an urgent independent inquiry into the cost of insurance in light of heightened risks linked to global heating.

The group’s recommendations include the introduction of an insurance price monitor to prevent consumers being exploited, a standard definition of key terms such as “fire” in industry contracts and a modernised regime of what “standard cover” means so policies can be easily understood and compared.

EDIT

The law centre’s call follows similar warnings elsewhere. Murich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, last year told the Guardian that climate change could make cover for ordinary people unaffordable as it attributed US$24bn of losses from the Californian wildfires on human-induced heating. In October, the Reserve Bank of Australia found it was increasingly important that investors and institutions manage carbon risk, and warned insurers were the most directly exposed to climate change. It said inflation-adjusted insurance claims for natural disasters were more than twice as large last decade as the one before, and was likely to continue to grow.

The Consumer Action Law Centre said since the summer bushfires it had received reports from community organisations in regional areas of significant delays in insurers undertaking assessments or arranging quotes for bushfire damage in remote parts of Victoria. It said problems spanned different types of natural disaster, citing an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry into insurance in northern Australia that found premiums had increased far more in that part of the country than elsewhere over the previous decade after insurers adopted a more fine-grained assessment of the greater risk in the north from cyclones and floods.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/28/climate-crisis-will-make-insurance-unaffordable-for-people-who-need-it-most

[samsingh]

1. Maybe these people should start to get involved and vote Labor in.