Could Climate Change Make Insurance Coverage Too Expensive For Most People?

Given that the world’s largest reinsurance firm – Munich Re – warned us five days ago that insurance premium rate rises could become a social issue, is climate change making insurance coverage too expensive for ordinary people?

By: Ringo Bones

Insurers around the world manage to reach a consensus five days ago to issue a warning that climate change could make coverage for ordinary people unaffordable after the world’s largest reinsurance firm blamed global warming for 24-billion US dollars (18-billion UK£) of losses in the California wildfires. Ernst Rauch, Munich Re’s chief climatologist, told the Guardian newspaper that the costs could soon be widely felt, with premium rises already under discussion with clients holding asset concentrations in vulnerable parts of the state. From my point view, it could only be a matter of time for insurance claims adjusters, insurance brokers and anyone at the leading insurance companies’ underwriters’ box to set premiums rates for flood and fire insurance for Malibu, California homeowners to rival that of Lloyd’s Of London’s “unique risks” coverage – i.e. coverage for risks whose actuarial figures and adequate tables of probability are not available, as in like those of insurance coverage for the sudden reappearance of the “Loch Ness Monster”.

According to Munich Re, the lion’s share of California’s 20 worst forest fire blazes since the 1930s have occurred in the 21^st Century, in years characterized by abnormally high summer temperatures and “exceptional dryness” between the months of May and October. And Munich Re’s chief climatologist Ernst Rauch states that: “If the risk from wildfires, flooding, storms and hail is increasing then the only sustainable option we have is to adjust our risk price accordingly. In the long run it might become a social issue”. Too bad there’s still no coverage yet for a so-called “President Trump Climate Change and Global Warming Denial Insurance”.