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InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant

Carolyn Kousky: Associate Vice President, Economics and Policy, EDF: Understanding Disaster Insurance: New Tools for a More Resilient Future (243)

InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant

InsTech

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.850 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As climate extremes worsen, insurance plays a more important role in helping people recover from disasters. Yet even many of the most exposed people do not buy the coverage they need, while the global protection gap continues to widen as more homes are developed in high-risk areas. In this episode, InsTech's Ali Smedley and Henry Gale talk to Carolyn Kousky, Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy, Environmental Defense Fund and author of 'Understanding Disaster Insurance: New Tools for a More Resilient Future'. The book provides an overview of disaster insurance markets and the role of the public sector, then focuses on how innovations in insurance, such as parametric coverage and community-based catastrophe insurance, can build resilience. Topics include: Encouraging risk reduction and mitigation How to design effective parametric microinsurance products Implementing community-based flood insurance in New York City How insurance can help create a nature-positive economy The roles of the public and private sectors in building disaster resilience Why countries with developed insurance markets still have large protection gaps We’d love to know what you think about this episode - click here and add your thoughts to our LinkedIn post about it. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on LinkedIn. Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning. To find out more about InsTech, our membership and offerings visit www.instech.co or contact us [email protected] Continuing Professional Development - Learning Objectives InsTech is accredited by The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). By listening to any InsTech podcast, you can claim up to 0.5 hours towards your CPD scheme. By the end of this podcast, you should be able to meet the following Learning Objectives: Describe some of the ways insurance can increase resilience in disaster-prone communities Explain some of the reasons large protection gaps still exist in the insurance market List the key resources required to design microinsurance products successfully If your organisation is a member of InsTech and you would like to receive a quarterly summary of the CPD hours you have earned, visit the Episode 243 page of the InsTech website or email [email protected] to let us know you have listened to this podcast. To help us measure the impact of the learning, we would be grateful if you would take a minute to complete a quick feedback survey.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Good morning, good afternoon,

0:10.4

and whatever you are and whatever you are doing.

0:12.4

Matthew Grant here, CEO of Instac,

0:14.2

and a little bit of a midweek special here now.

0:16.8

As climate gets worse, insurance plays a more important role

0:20.0

in helping people recover

0:21.0

from disasters. Yet, many of the most exposed people don't buy the coverage they need,

0:25.2

and that global protection gap continues to widen. So today, Ali Smedley and Henry Gail from

0:30.6

our research team, both respectively responsible for our climate and our parametric newsletter,

0:35.7

are interviewing Karin Kowski, who is Associate Vice President

0:38.5

for Economics and Policy and the Environmental Defence Fund. Carolyn has written a book

0:43.4

on understanding disaster insurance, new tools for a more resilient future. So for your midweek

0:49.0

special, we have a review and interview with Carolyn, and I'm sure you're going to enjoy

0:53.7

a little preliminary insight into

0:55.7

the book itself. That's pretty much it for me today. You can find out everything we're up to

0:59.6

www.instech.com. Carolyn, it's great to have you join Henry and I today all the way from Philadelphia.

1:12.4

Thanks so much for having me.

1:14.4

So you have a really interesting background, having worked on climate resilience strategies,

1:19.0

developing inclusive models for insurance, and you've also done lots of research into climate risk management.

1:24.8

But by way of introduction, could you talk a bit more about your background and your

1:28.1

current role at the Environmental Defense Fund? Yeah, sure. I just joined EDF last August, and I'm located

1:35.4

within the economic research team at EDF. One of the things that differentiates us is that we try to

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