What Questions Should Insurance Boards Be Asking About Climate Risk?
- ED4S
- Jun 2
- 2 min read
Over the past few months, we’ve been experimenting with something that started as a small internal exercise.
We kept asking ourselves:
How do we tool our clients with effective resources to make climate and ESG discussions more practical, more strategic, and less overwhelming for leaders (especially in sectors like insurance where the stakes are becoming increasingly real)?
So we started testing the use of generative technology to help us build concise executive “cheat sheets” tailored to different sectors and organizational roles.
Not generic AI outputs.
But resources grounded in:
- industry research,
- systems thinking,
and credible sources from organizations like:
United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) ,
Geneva Association, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation,
International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) /SASB, TCFD, and other insurance-sector publications and frameworks.
One of the first topics we explored was:
👉 questions insurance boards of directors should be asking management about climate risk, resilience, adaptation, and long-term insurability.
Honestly, one of the biggest takeaways for us during this process was how much the conversation is evolving.
A few years ago, many organizations still viewed climate mostly as: sustainability, disclosure, or reputational risk.
But increasingly ( especially in insurance ) the conversation is becoming about: affordability, solvency, resilience, infrastructure, adaptation, and long-term economic stability.
And perhaps most importantly:
the future of insurance may depend not only on how well insurers transfer risk, but on how well they help reduce and manage societal risk (After all they have vested interest in a safe, stable world).
This resource is definitely not perfect.
It’s an experiment, a learning process, and hopefully a useful starting point for conversation.
If you work in insurance, sustainable finance, governance, or climate risk, we would genuinely welcome your thoughts, critiques, and ideas for improvement. If you would like a copy of this cheat sheet please email us hi@ed4s.org.
We are also preparing a series of instructor-led executive trainings (60–90 min) that can be adapted for:
- boards of directors,
- executives,
- risk teams,
- sustainability functions,
- underwriting teams,
- and financial institutions more broadly.
If there are specific training needs or topics your organization is currently exploring, feel free to reach out.
