Climate change

Global warming was ranked as the biggest risk to society over the next five to 10 years in a report released Tuesday by French insurance giant AXA SA. While that also topped the ranking in 2018 and 2019, it was outstripped by diseases and pandemics last year as the virus spread across the globe.

Sempra’s Southern California Gas Co. utility said it reached a $1.8 billion settlement for individual claims for the 2015 leak at the Aliso Canyon storage facility near Los Angeles, according to a statement Monday. The company reached separate agreements to settle property and business claims for about $40 million.

As many as 2.4 million homes are at risk of losing protection in 2021 as year-long grace periods expire – though new disasters may extend their shields. In all, 18% of the state’s households could effectively lose protection, the largest single group since the moratorium law took effect three years ago.

In other news: Amerisure implements One Inc ClaimsPay tech; California drivers report distracted driving is getting worse; HSB adds social media income to home cyber protection.

Deanne Criswell, the first woman to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in April took over a 20,000-person operation exhausted by managing responses to disasters linked to global warming: wildfires and the 2020 hurricane season, the most active on record.

Nicholas is the Atlantic’s 14th storm in 2021. Half of the storms so far have hit the U.S., and Ida was the season’s worst, crashing into the Louisiana coastline before devastating New York with rain and floods that killed more than 40 people. On Monday, AIR Worldwide updated its projected losses from Ida, saying the storm probably caused $20 billion to $30 billion in insured losses. Earlier estimates were around $18 billion.

In other news: Cowbell Cyber releases API; Discount Tire, Motorq offer data analytics platform; and Roamly announces new hire and expansion plan.

A $5 billion grant program in the infrastructure bill calls for utilities to harden power lines, including by taking them off of towers and burying them underground, but that option may be a poor fit for the Gulf Coast’s topography. It’s also expensive.

To date, just one insurer has promised to take “significant action” in this regard, according to analysts at Societe Generale SA. Australia’s Suncorp was the first to announce it would no longer provide coverage for all new oil and gas production projects.

Several companies are using artificial intelligence and data analytics to better map properties for coverage in potential high-risk wildfire areas.

Climate change is exacerbating extreme and freak weather events so rapidly that even the insurance industry is struggling to keep up.

Has insurance's 'noble purpose' ever been more relevant to society than now?

Reinsurer is pushing for the development of technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide.