As part of the COP26 summit in Glasgow, the Insurance Development Forum (IDF) has announced a new partnership with the V20 Group of Ministers of Finance, which will see them create of a global public-private partnership programme, to be known as the Global Risk Modelling Alliance (GRMA).
The GRMA programme will offer three elements: open-source technology and standards, provided by industry and optimised for public-sector use cases; a public good fund to help countries fill model and data gaps; and a technical assistance team of public and private sector practitioners to work with countries on applied projects.
It will apply open data standards throughout, enabling countries to build, share and further develop risk views across ministries, disaster risk management authorities and research institutions.
At the same time, the IDF announced the joint establishment of the Global Resilience Index Initiative (GRII), a multi-partner initiative that will provide a globally consistent model for the assessment of resilience across all sectors and geographies.
It will be a curated, open-source resource offering high-level metrics across the built environment, infrastructure, agriculture and societal exposures, with many potential applications in aggregated risk management worldwide.
Both of these commitments follow the announcement of a new partnership with Start Network, a coalition of more than 50 humanitarian charities, to support the buildout of a global financial service for the humanitarian sector.
“Effective risk management to protect the prosperity of our people means to protect and future-proof our economies,” said H.E. Fatima Yasmin, Secretary, Economic Relations Division, Ministry of Finance, People‘s Republic of Bangladesh, V20 Presidency.
“We need to protect our asset base and logistics infrastructure to make sure we can secure our supply chains and price stability. For that, we need creative and decisive collaboration across domestic and international institutions for better access to existing data and models as well as more and regional and sectoral detail.”
Denis Duverne, AXA Group and Insurance Development Forum Chairman, also commented: “We are proud to work with the V20 for the GRMA, and with our partners in the GRII, to drive a major step-change in the effort to open up access to climate risk understanding.”
“The announcements made today are testament to the power that collective action can have in the effort to build resilience to climate change,” Duverne continued. “IDF members are committing funds, technology and expertise to provide tangible benefits to countries and populations vulnerable to climate change. This will be a crucial support to resilience and adaptation efforts and ultimately it will define what a climate-resilient future must look like.”
Ian Branagan, Group Risk Chief Officer, RenaissanceRe and Co-Chair of the IDF Risk Modelling Working Group, further stated: “Improved risk analysis and understanding in V20 countries opens the door to resilient investment and can reduce the burden on governments by transferring risks to capital and insurance markets that have the capacity and expertise to better bear them. It also enhances risk management, disaster preparedness and crisis response programmes which prioritise early action and protect vulnerable populations.”
And finally, Christina Bennett, CEO of Start Network, a global network of more than 50 humanitarian agencies, also welcomed these developments, said: “We are delighted about our partnership, which will see the insurance industry, through the IDF, providing technical assistance and risk management software to Start Ready, a new humanitarian financial service that Start Network is launching at COP26, aiming to help communities get ahead of escalating climate-related risks through pre-arranged finance.”
