In a communiqué to COP30, the Forum for Insurance Transition (FIT) has described how the insurance industry can preserve its long-term future and continue to service the market in the face of the climate and nature crises. The document also suggests how the sector can strengthen its contribution to a just transition to inclusive, resilient and sustainable communities and economies.
FIT is a structured dialogue and multistakeholder platform led and convened by the United Nations to support the necessary acceleration and scaling up of voluntary climate action by the insurance industry and key stakeholders. The convenor, chair and spokesperson of the FIT is the United Nations Environment Programme, which provides and serves as the secretariat.
“COP30 provides an excellent opportunity to put a more systematic approach in motion,” FIT said, recommending the creation of an International Taskforce on Climate Resilience and Transition Insurance.
This taskforce should bring together insurers, the wider financial community, finance ministries and other relevant government ministries, central banks and financial supervisors, corporates, civil society, and international organisations to take forward this agenda.
FIT said the taskforce’s mandate should include six main areas.
Mapping risks and protection gaps
Assess and map climate-related risks, losses, and insurance protection gaps across regions, sectors, and income groups under different climate change and nature scenarios. Clarify how risks are currently absorbed – by governments, insurers, businesses, or households – and where they are left unmanaged. The findings must be treated as a global public good, available to all governments, regulators, market participants, and the general public, rather than confined to private analyses or proprietary datasets. Such an assessment would help provide the missing evidence base to support effective, fair approaches to risk sharing; inform public–private partnerships and fiscal planning; help insurance markets play their full role in building inclusive, resilient and sustainable communities and economies; and enable communities to make informed choices about the risks they face. It also encouraged the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report to include a dedicated chapter on the global economic and financial risks of climate change and their implications for insurance systems.
Guiding policy frameworks
Provide practical guidance to finance ministries and regulators on how to incentivise loss prevention, strengthen insurance markets, and design fairer, more sustainable approaches to risk sharing. This should include the integration of climate-related contingent liabilities into fiscal planning and debt sustainability frameworks, as well as support for governments to incorporate the triple role of the insurance industry as risk managers, risk carriers and investors into their Nationally Determined Contributions, National Adaptation Plans, and national biodiversity strategies and action plans.
Building capacity and driving solutions
Strengthen the capabilities of governments, finance ministries and supervisory bodies, many of which currently lack the mandate, data, or expertise to address these risks systematically. This includes creating shared metrics and early warning systems for when insurance withdrawal poses systemic financial stability risks. It also encourages governments to create a central, coordinating role at the national level, such as a country risk officer – who will be responsible for strategic oversight of climate and disaster risk reduction and the systematic assessment and management of risks at all levels – from municipalities and cities; to provinces and states. A country risk officer would be the equivalent of a chief risk officer in the corporate world, but with a public face. A country risk officer could serve as the primary person or office to lead and coordinate climate and disaster risk reduction efforts nationwide, spanning risk identification, quantification and modelling; risk prevention and reduction; and risk transfer solutions.
Mobilising transition insurance and finance
Explore policies that might incentivise insurers to contribute more directly to insuring and financing the clean energy transition, the nature-positive transition and resilient infrastructure through their underwriting practices that shape the cost and availability of capital across sectors, and through their role as institutional investors. Some insurers have already chosen to align their underwriting and investment portfolios and practices with the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This needs to become the standard across the industry.
Fostering modelling, product and market innovation
Set up the right enabling environment to support the development and scaling of catastrophe risk models that integrate climate change and nature, and of risk transfer solutions (both indemnity-based and parametric) – such as catastrophe insurance, inclusive insurance, insurance-linked securities, blended public–private schemes and regional risk pools – that can expand affordable and sustainable coverage, particularly in underserved markets.
Ensuring equity and affordability
Identify policy approaches to make insurance accessible and affordable for vulnerable households, marginalised communities, MSMEs, and critical sectors such as agriculture, while avoiding arrangements that entrench inequality or weaken incentives for loss prevention.
“We believe that these recommendations will advance a systematic whole-of-society, whole-of-economy approach to climate resilience and decarbonisation, enable all stakeholders to better understand and reduce risk, foster innovative risk transfer solutions, improve insurability, and support a just transition to inclusive, resilient and sustainable communities and economies,” FIT said, adding that the recommendations of its COP30 insurance communiqué and future communiqués could be taken forward by the proposed International Taskforce on Climate Resilience and Transition Insurance.
“Every year, the taskforce can report on the progress of implementing the recommendations, and provide new recommendations as necessary, building on initiatives already under way,” it said.
