Evaluating Climate Change Underwriting Approaches in Iran’s Insurance Industry

Aims: The insurance strategy of direct insurers (reinsurers) should be in accordance with actuarial risk-based principles. Therefore, every decision and action taken by insurance institutions in relation to climate change adaptation requires a risk assessment. Therefore, examining international underwriting and dealing with the climate change insurance process in Iran can provide useful strategies to managers. This research has been done in order to investigate the situation of Iran's insurance industry in the underwriting of climate change. Materials & methods: In the beginning, insurance plans and coverage and climate change risk management strategies are reviewed in selected developed and developing countries. Then, the experiences of global surveys, regarding climate change are used in order to develop a questionnaire in line with the current situation of Iran country in the field of climate change insurance. Finding:  The results of the questionnaire’s analysis distributed among 35 insurance experts on climate change risk management, show that some insurance companies, despite predicting the impact of climate risks in their insurance processes and empowering their employees, don’t have any plan for the assessment and mitigation of greenhouse gases, regular assessment of climate hazards, providing incentives and modeling. Also, the strategy of annual re-pricing and risk-based pricing has the highest priority to face climate change in insurance companies. Conclusion: Most of the country's insurance companies use different strategies to deal with climate change, of which annual repricing and risk-based pricing have been the most popular.

Evaluating Climate Change Underwriting Approaches in Iran’s Insurance Industry Keywords:

Risk management , Pricing , Climate risk assessment , Insurance companies