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Climate change and its effect on insurance industry
Landa, Josef ; Daňhel, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Kiovský, Tomáš (referee)
Climate change is an undisputable fact. However it has not been found out yet with certainty what role does the human activity play and how is climate change influenced by nature cycles. A major role play greenhouse gases trapped in the atmosphere. These gases are linked to various issues, one of them being the global warming. In order to reduce the amount of emitted greenhouse gases, various conferences on climate change took place. During meetings participants have been trying to find a solution for gradual reducing level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Climate change will probably result in more severe natural catastrophes, according to renowned scientists. Most probably there will be a rising occurrence of tropical cyclones, severe droughts or a change in rain precipitation throughout the world. Future predictions are not clear yet and there is still no common agreement among scientists about how the future developments will be. However there is a clear increasing trend in the amount of insured losses, economic losses and the number of catastrophic events, which influences insurance industry. This trend could be caused by more elements, including increasing insurance penetration, increasing concentration of economic values or increasing migration into hazard zones. Climate change can also be partly to blame for the negative developments of insured losses and therefore insurance industry should play a major role in an effort to assess possible future risks in order to decrease its vulnerability to future risk developments. Indemnity rise makes insurance companies and the whole industry more vulnerable to insolvency and thus new ways to diversify risks are being searched for. Cooperation between public and private sector is one of the solutions which help to make almost uninsurable risks insurable. However, there are still risks that are almost unbearable by cooperation of these two sectors. Alternative risk transfer to capital market is one of solutions for mitigating the possibility of huge future losses. In the process of an alternative risk transfer, investors are participating in catastrophe risk development through e.g. catastrophe bonds. Bonds give investors an opportunity to further diversify their portfolio and receive an attractive yield in return to an exposure to a risk of a big catastrophe loss which could result in installment cut, installment annulment or even principal annulment depending on the severity of the catastrophe. Through these risk transfer methods catastrophe losses of huge extents can be spread to more parties, helping to decrease the risk of default of parties and thus increasing the probability of liabilities settlement.
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