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InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

Rachel Delhaise, Chief Sustainability Officer: Convex: Insurance’s critical role in global resilience (402)

InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

InsTech

Entrepreneurship, Business, Investing

4.951 Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Introduction  In this episode, Matthew Grant speaks with Rachel Delhaise, Chief Sustainability Officer at Convex, about what climate sustainability really looks like inside a modern insurance business.  While attention may have shifted elsewhere, the underlying challenges have not gone away. Rachel offers a clear view of how insurers are continuing to respond through underwriting decisions, risk modelling and long-term investment thinking.  Rachel joined Convex in the early stages of the business to build its sustainability approach from the ground up. Her role spans three core areas: identifying opportunities in the transition, strengthening how climate risk is understood and managed and supporting cutting-edge carbon science research. Together, these reflect a broader shift in how insurers are positioning themselves as active participants in enabling change.  The conversation explores how insurance is supporting emerging technologies such as carbon capture and storage, where underwriting plays a critical role in making projects viable. Rachel also shares how the industry is approaching increasingly complex risks, from wildfire to flood, in a world where historical data is no longer a reliable guide.  Drawing on her experience across underwriting, investment and industry collaboration, she explains why the fundamentals of risk still matter, even as new tools and models emerge. She also highlights the growing influence of insurance thinking across the wider financial system, as banks and investors begin to grapple with physical climate risk in more sophisticated ways.  At the heart of the discussion is a simple but important idea: insurance has a unique ability to enable progress, but only if it is brought into the conversation early and used intelligently.  In this conversation, Rachel shares:  Why sustainability remains a core strategic priority, even as public attention fluctuates   How insurers are supporting the transition through underwriting and investment, not just policy statements   What it takes to insure emerging areas like carbon capture and storage   Why pricing, rather than capacity, is often the real constraint in renewable energy insurance   How insurers are adapting to climate risk with limited historical data   Why understanding exposure and vulnerability is still fundamental to modelling future risk   What the protection gap reveals about global resilience and economic stability   How insurance expertise is shaping how banks and investors assess climate risk   Why involving insurers earlier can significantly improve the success of large projects   Rachel’s recommendations  Podcast: Fossil vs Future   Book: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson  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.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Well, hello there. Welcome or welcome back, as always to the INSTECH podcast.

0:15.0

It's Zoya here and this week I'm introducing Matthew Grant with Rachel Delehays. Sustainability might not be

0:22.8

dominating the headlines right now, but the risks and the opportunities are only getting bigger.

0:28.4

In this episode, we get into what climate strategy actually looks like inside an insurer,

0:33.4

and why insurance could be one of the most important enablers of the energy transition.

0:38.3

Rachel Dela Hayes, Chief Sustainability Officer at Combex,

0:41.3

brings a clear, pragmatic perspective,

0:43.3

spanning everything from underwriting carbon capture projects

0:47.3

to uncovering the hidden risks sitting at our ocean floors.

0:50.3

So how do you ensure something with no historical data? Where does insurance unlock innovation

0:55.9

and where might it slow things down? And why are insurers increasingly central to global

1:00.7

financial resilience? If you think sustainability is taking the backseat, this conversation

1:05.7

might change your mind. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

1:19.0

Rachel, it's great to be talking to you.

1:25.3

We've known each other a long time, and for the last few years, you've had a role of Chief Sustainability Officer for Convex.

1:44.1

You're working in the office. There's a bit of background noise, but that's great. It just proves that there's real life going on around you. Welcome me. I'm looking forward to talking to you. Nice to be here talking to you, Matthew. So one of the things we want to talk about today is what's happening in the world of climate sustainability. What does it mean? It's sort of dropped under the radar slightly. It feels like looking at it from the outside with all the recent focus on generative AI. What's your sort of primary goal just now for convex in your role?

1:51.2

So that hasn't changed. You're right. It has dropped on the agenda a little bit, sort of globally.

1:57.0

But no, as far as I'm concerned, you know, I was brought in five years ago to lead our work that we are doing towards sustainability and particularly with a focus on climate and the environment and putting a framework in place on that and establishing all that we're going to be doing. So that hasn't sort of been dinted. And it takes probably three different angles.

2:18.5

One is how we're, what we're doing from an opportunity perspective in terms of both our investments

2:22.9

and our underwriting.

2:24.9

Another is on our risk mitigation.

2:27.6

So climate risk, obviously the way in which is impacting the broader world and indeed

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