Climate change

In other news: Chubb teams up with Betterfly in Latin America; Franklin Mutual partners with vipHomeLink; Aon announces last-mile insurance with CarrierHQ.

The clock is ticking for banks, insurers and asset managers still providing support to oil, gas and coal producers. It’s not just the moral imperative—that fossil-fuel use is destroying the atmosphere and life on Earth with it. It’s that their financial health requires leaving such companies behind.

New research highlights the evolving role of the insurance industry from reimbursements to incentivizing to reduce risk and prevent losses altogether.

In other news: Liberty Mutual launches insurance agency; Neptune Flood releases carbon-neutral plan; New York Life announces CEO-elect.

American International Group Inc. and other insurers avoided steep losses from a spate of extreme weather this year thanks in part to the reinsurance industry. But increased reliance on those policies probably means price hikes are coming.

About 20 nations have signed on to a deal to stop funding foreign fossil fuel projects -- with a last-minute entry by Italy. But the impact of the accord is undermined by the absence of key countries like China.

The impending loss and federal probe are the latest blows for embattled PG&E. The company incurred a $1.09 billion third-quarter loss because of bankruptcy costs, state-mandated contributions to a wildfire-insurance fund, prior fire-season damages and other costs, according to a statement.

AXA SA, France’s biggest insurer, is broadening the list of fossil-fuel activities that it will refrain from investing in, as pressure grows on financial companies to step back from funding industries that damage the climate.

Insured losses from the storm, the second-most intense hurricane to hit the state of Louisiana, will probably range between $28 million and $30 million, the reinsurer said in a statement Tuesday. It estimated its own cost from claims related to the storm at about $750 million.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency in April announced the first significant update to the beleaguered National Flood Insurance Program, which covers about 5 million properties. Premiums have risen steadily, but the program is more than $20 billion in debt, thanks in part to rising seas and stronger storms. Now, a quarter of the participants will see lower costs, while the remainder will see premiums rise in increments as high as 18% annually.

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.