Businesses
Are your company’s insurance premiums financing climate change?
As purchasers of commercial insurance, businesses can enhance their sustainability efforts by assessing the carbon footprint of their insurance carriers and communicate support for insurance options that aren’t enabling fossil fuels.
Your company can ensure it is taking a holistic approach to sustainability by assessing its insurance carriers and then taking steps to align sustainability and procurement policies beyond just the material supply chain. Businesses are critical to growing the demand in the U.S. market for low-carbon insurance and should feel good about sharing this climate leadership with employees, customers, and partners.
Aligning a company’s insurance procurement policies with other sustainability goals makes good business sense and is a real solution from the private sector.
Why buy insurance against risks – including climate risks – from the same insurance companies that are making the problem worse by insuring fossil fuels?
Resources:
- Brief: Insurance is a Sustainability Opportunity
- Sample Letter To Your Company’s Insurance Carriers
- Survey Tool to Assess Your Insurers’ Sustainability Policies
- Joint Business Statement to U.S. Insurance Industry (sent September 2020)
- Seventh Generation’s Corporate Consciousness Report (see pp. 20-21, 39-40)
Questions? Ideas? We’d like to hear from you. Fill out this brief form.
Municipalities
As policyholders, cities can help create demand for sustainable insurance. They can enact procurement policies that give preference to carriers that have limited fossil fuel financing and call on their carriers to stop underwriting and investing in fossil fuels and.
Some local government efforts to date include:
- Boulder County, CO adopted a resolution to screen prospective insurers on their insurance and investments in fossil fuels and use that information to inform their decision-making on insurance procurement.
- Los Angeles City Council adopted a motion that required the city to deliver an inventory of its insurance carriers and a method for evaluating prospective insurers based on their underwriting and investments in fossil fuels.
- The Boston suburbs of Cambridge and Somerville both passed resolutions; the latter will give preference for purchasing insurance from insurers that have adopted policies restricting insurance and investments for fossil fuels.
Elected officials, risk managers, and sustainability officers can all be a part of this solution. Aligning your city’s insurance procurement policies with sustainability goals makes sense and is a real solution from the public sector.
Resources:
- Insurance: A Climate Opportunity for Local Governments
- Roadmap: Decarbonize Your City’s Insurance
- Survey Tool to Assess Your Insurers’ Sustainability Policies
- Sample Resolution on Insurance and Fossil Fuels
- Sample Letter to Your City’s Insurance Carriers
- Sample Sustainability Policy on Insurance
Questions? Ideas? We want to hear from you. Fill out this brief form.