FIO’s Climate-Related Financial Risk Data Collection Finalized

November 3, 2023 by

The Department of Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office finalized its proposed Climate-Related Financial Risk Data Collection.

The FIO in June released a report analyzing climate-related issues and gaps in U.S. insurance supervision and regulation, calling state regulatory efforts fragmented and limited.

The office concluded there are “nascent and important efforts to incorporate climate-related risks into state insurance regulation and supervision.” It gave credit to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, but it encouraged “state insurance regulators to build on their progress.”

The finalized proposal now goes to the Office of Management and Budget for review, including a 30-day comment period on the final proposal.

“The Treasury Department’s call for data from insurance companies is a major step toward understanding and responding to an unfolding crisis,” Carly Fabian, insurance policy advocate with Public Citizen’s Climate Program, said in a statement.

The report, Insurance Supervision and Regulation of Climate-Related Risks, made 20 policy recommendations on improving supervision of climate-related risks, as well as recommendations on data collection, financial analysis, insurer solvency, surplus markets, consumer education, litigation risks and investment risks.

Under Siege

Life on the planet “is under siege” and we’re “in an uncharted territory,” a new report warns.

The report in the journal BioScience, The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory, points to long-standing warnings from the scientific community of extreme climatic conditions driven by escalating global temperatures.

“Unfortunately, time is up,” the authors state. “We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.”

The report presents the “vital signs of the planet and the potential drivers of climate change and climate-related responses” as a backdrop to climate-related records and patterns of climate-related disasters. It points to heat waves across the world that led to record high temperatures, historically warm oceans and unprecedented low levels of sea ice in Antarctica.

“In addition, June through August of this year was the warmest period ever recorded, and in early July, we witnessed Earth’s highest global daily average surface temperature ever measured, possibly the warmest temperature on Earth over the past 100,000 years,” the authors state. “It is a sign that we are pushing our planetary systems into dangerous instability.”

Australian Inflation

Australian inflation is being driven by climate change, geopolitical shocks and government policies, Bloomberg reported in an article on Insurance Journal on Wednesday.

Economists anticipate the Reserve Bank will respond with monetary tightening as soon as next week, even though those are factors typically beyond control.

Australian home prices rose month in October for the eighth consecutive month, while rental vacancies hit a new record low.

The top drivers of consumer prices last quarter were house prices and rents, gasoline and insurance. They collectively constitute roughly 19% of the consumer price index basket, but accounted for 44% of price increases, according to Bloomberg Economics.

“Can further rate hikes do anything to address these forces?” James McIntyre said at Bloomberg Economics. “We think oil, electricity, rents and insurance spikes will have faded by the 2H2025 window the Reserve Bank sees inflation returning to target, and will do so without any further help from the RBA.”

Carbon Budgets

The amount of carbon dioxide civilization can still emit while keeping global warming below a target set by the 2015 Paris agreement is with a given probability – in other words, it is still possible.

A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change published on Oct. 30, Assessing the size and uncertainty of remaining carbon budgets, examines the remaining carbon budget. The remaining carbon budgets, or RCB, is the net amount of CO2 humans can still emit without exceeding a chosen global warming limit.

RCB estimates for keeping warming to 1.5 °C are small, and minor changes in their calculation can result in large relative adjustments, the study shows.

If greenhouse gasses continue to be emitted at the current rate, the threshold will be reached in about six years, according to the study.

The researchers assessed the RCBs through six contributing factors. They also acknowledged some uncertainties going forward.

“Key uncertainties affecting RCB estimates are the contribution of non-CO2 emissions, which depends on socioeconomic projections as much as on geophysical uncertainty, and potential warming after net zero CO2,” the study states.

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