The Italian insurer Generali is in first place in the annual ranking of the NGO coalition “Insure our Future”, which evaluates the climate policies of the 30 major global (re)insurers, ahead of the German Allianz and the Swiss Zurich and Swiss D.
“Insure our future” has distributed good and bad points to insurers and reinsurers every year for eight years, assigning a score to their policy governing fossil fuels. For example, insurers that decide to no longer insure new oil or gas fields are better ranked.
Even if the Europeans are doing better overall than their competitors in North America and Japan, the results remain severe for the entire sector.
“Despite an ever-increasing climate bill and a growing risk of an uninsurable world, large (re)insurers continue to exacerbate climate change by supporting the expansion of fossil fuels,” says Reclaim Finance, an NGO, in a press release. member of the coalition, which has more than 20 members including Greenpeace and Eko.
“Generali has adopted restrictions in the oil sector and the gas value chain, including for new LNG terminals” (liquefied natural gas), which allowed it to take first place in the ranking ahead of Allianz in 2024. They are followed by Zurich Insurance, “the first insurer committed to no longer covering new metallurgical coal projects”.
For their part, the French Axa (6th place) and Scor (11th) “remain at a standstill” in the fight against global warming and “continue to lose places” in the ranking of the NGO collective “Insure our future” , underlines Reclaim.
“If Axa and Scor had set an example on coal, this is far from being the case on oil and gas, and even less on LNG. They are now choosing to take advantage of the climate crisis to increase their prices or even abandon certain policyholders while continuing to fuel the problem by ensuring the expansion of oil and gas,” said in a separate press release Ariel Le Bourdonnec, insurance campaign manager for the NGO Reclaim Finance, member of the consortium. .
“Insure our Future” indicates that a third of insured losses linked to weather phenomena in the world are attributable to climate change, or 600 billion dollars in almost twenty years, according to its calculations.
“Axa is committed to no longer insuring new oil fields (exclusions in place since January 1) and gas fields (exclusions in place from September 1, 2025) +upstream+ (exploration, development and production),” said the French insurer reacted in a press release on Tuesday, adding that its policies did not concern the transport and storage sector and “therefore do not apply to LNG”.
“We have made the commitment to become +net zero+”, or zero net emissions, “by 2050 for all of our activities and even 2030 for our operations”, for its part recalled the reinsurer Scor, adding that it had announced in 2024 “a target for reducing the carbon intensity of part of the subscription portfolio”.
According to the UN definition, “net zero emissions” means that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to as close to zero as possible, with remaining emissions reabsorbed, for example by oceans and forests.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / awp / afp
