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Swiss Re
Tue Dec 20, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook’s Climate Change Series. Okay, you’ve got your 40 acres insured against weather disaster, but will your policy get blown away in a storm of claims? Chris Walker is a managing director at the New York office of Swiss Re, one of a small group of companies that comes to the rescue when the weather gets really rough. The “Reeee” stands for reinsurance.
In essence, we allow or enable the insurers to write business because we actually assume part of their risk.
If the damages run too high, then an insurance company can pass part of the bill on to its re-insurer. It’s a safety valve that helps keep the whole system running. But what about Climate Change? Swiss Re is taking it very seriously, because its bottom line is at stake.
The economic cost of catastrophic weather events has increased dramatically over the last few years.
In fact, the insured damages worldwide for 2004 were $48 billion, and 2005 may be worse. Re-insurers use the past to help calculate their future risk, but climate change throws a monkey wrench into that strategy.
The concern is that, now what climate change does is potentially changes that historical record. Because certainly the trend line is that there are more intense events and more frequent events in the last few years than there were in the previous ninety.
To help address Climate Change, Swiss Re is supporting public awareness campaigns and working to become carbon-neutral. Its new building in London is the most energy-efficient skyscraper in town. And unlike most modern office buildings, you can even open the windows.
That’s part of how it’s energy-efficient, actually. You can cool it by having the windows open.
Our show is funded by Subaru of America. Climate Change support comes from Environmental Defense.
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