Nine insurance CEOs from the US, Australia, Japan, the UK, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland and France identify environmental risk as the industry’s primary challenge in a global interview series conducted by Sollers Consulting.
Across the interviews, climate-related exposures are described not as a cyclical issue but as a structural shift affecting underwriting, capital allocation and reinsurance strategy.
Andrew Horton, CEO of QBE, said: “We anticipate continued challenges in an evolving global landscape, including inflationary pressures, security concerns across multiple regions, environmental risks and broader economic uncertainty”. He noted that emerging data capabilities in weather, cyber and workers’ compensation are enabling product adjustments in response to changing risk patterns.
Ken Norgrove, CEO of Intact Insurance UK, described climate change as “the defining trend of our time and the biggest challenge faced by our sector,” adding that global insured losses have exceeded US$100 billion for five consecutive years. He said reinsurance remains a “key tool” for managing exposure and maintaining resilience. That observation aligns with 2025 industry estimates of about $100 billion in insured catastrophe losses, even in what executives characterized as a relatively quiet year.
Jean-Daniel Laffely, CEO of Vaudoise Insurance, said environmental issues represent “another key challenge, as the frequency and severity of claims are increasing every year”. He added: “We are addressing these challenges by strengthening our resilience, diversifying our investments and risks, and integrating sustainability criteria into our decision-making processes”.
In France, Isabelle Le Bot, CEO of La France Mutualiste and head of savings at Malakoff Humanis Group, said: “The ecological transition remains a major challenge in which financial actors have an essential role. The ecological transition requires redirecting capital toward responsible investments”. Her comments place capital deployment and portfolio construction alongside underwriting discipline in responding to environmental risk.
Andrej Slapar of Zavarovalnica Triglav described climate change, economic volatility and geopolitical tensions as forming a “complex risk landscape,” citing record economic losses from disasters and insufficient insurance penetration in affected regions. He linked catastrophe experience in Slovenia to product adaptation and risk-prevention initiatives.
While environmental exposure ranked first across the interviews, political security was most often cited as the second concern. Executives pointed to regulatory burdens, capital requirements and geopolitical tensions affecting underwriting conditions. In Germany, Dr. Jürg Schiltknecht of Baloise
Germany referred to economic stagnation and regulatory pressure as material constraints on growth.
Technology threads through each discussion. Simon Wilson, of Markel Insurance, said advances in catastrophe models, IoT data and analytics have altered how risk is quantified. Horton added: “The explosion of data, advancements in artificial intelligence and the increasing power of cloud computing are fundamentally reshaping the industry”. Taken together, the interviews present a consistent hierarchy: environmental risk first, political security second, economic volatility third. For reinsurers, the implications are direct. Catastrophe frequency, capital strain, modeling sophistication and regulatory scrutiny are being addressed concurrently, with reinsurance cited as a central mechanism for exposure management and balance sheet stability.
