Emergency Management, Insurance and Preparedness: How risk transfer can be a game changer for resilience
In this session, we will discuss the broad topic of risk transfer and how it can play a role in increasing resilience at all scales, from local to international. Tendencies in the United States to concentrate emergency response capabilities within individual states are juxtaposed to international efforts to transfer risk as collective pools, for instance in Africa, through Africa Risk Capacity (ARC) or CCRIF (Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility). We will explore the arguments for these strategies alongside the roles that the public sector needs to fulfil in collaboration with the private sector. We will explore how the insurance industry can assist in transferring risks efficiently through new mechanisms, organizations such as the Insurance Development Fund (IDF), and families of new products in the parametric reinsurance realm.
Key questions to be addressed
- Preparedness versus reactivity: What is the current state of practice among the public and private sector to respond to shocks from catastrophes?
- National and international systems for risk management: Pooling and collaboration versus local capacity – where is the balance shifting?
- What can the insurance market bring to the table? What is the experience of the global insurance systems in providing support for emergency management and preparedness? How is insurance supporting resilience?
- Parametric insurance developments as mechanisms for transparent and efficient risk transfer. At what stage of implementation are we, and why is this field considered to hold promise?
Target participants
Emergency managers and administrators, insurance and re-insurance practitioners, government and public sector officials, risk modelling firms, finance specialists, academics and researchers in resilience, infrastructure and climate risk.