By Paul Homewood
Beware insurers wanting to increase premiums!
The Guardian’s Damian Carrington has fallen for the old trick!
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The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.
The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.
The core business of the insurance industry is risk management and it has long taken the dangers of global heating very seriously. In recent reports, Aviva said extreme weather damages for the decade to 2023 hit $2tn, while GallagherRE said the figure was $400bn in 2024. Zurich said it was “essential” to hit net zero by 2050.
Thallinger said: “The good news is we already have the technologies to switch from fossil combustion to zero-emission energy. The only thing missing is speed and scale. This is about saving the conditions under which markets, finance, and civilisation itself can continue to operate.”
Read the full story here.
Meanwhile back in the real world, Allianz are doing very well thank you! All of these supposed weather disasters have not made a dent in profits.
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https://www.allianz.com/en/investor_relations/results-reports/annual-reports.html
Operating profits increased to £16.0 billion last year, a margin of 9% of premiums.
Taking away the Life Sector, the Property and Motor Sector still accounted for over half the total profit.
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The insurance business is all about calculation of risk, which then leads to the setting of premiums. If risks increase, for whatever reason, premiums rise in line; the insurer over time continues to make his margin.
Some things may become uninsurable, a house built on a flood plain, for instance. That’s tough luck for the homeowner, but the house should clearly never have been built there.
But overall weather losses have been falling in real terms as a proportion of GDP:
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https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/climate-change-is-showing-its-claws
Given that the world’s GDP is estimated at $106 trillion, Roger Pielke’s figures suggest weather losses of about $200 billion a year, in line with the $2 trillion quoted by Aviva for the decade to 2023.
The Guardian would like its readers to believe that such numbers are catastrophic and unaffordable for the insurance industry. In reality it is just business as usual.
But what better way to push up premiums than to play the climate card.