In a year defined by war, inflation and political uncertainty, corporate risk radars are increasingly dominated by the visible and immediate.
But insurance leaders are sounding the alarm that climate risk may no longer command headlines, yet it remains the most pervasive — and the one most likely to worsen every other threat businesses face.
“We live in a time of polycrisis,” said Frank Streidl (pictured 2nd from the right), head of commercial insurance at Zurich UK, during a panel discussion on emerging corporate risks at the Insurance Innovators Summit in London this week. “Economic volatility, military conflict, cyber disruption… these issues are overshadowing climate risk, but climate risk is still the fundamental problem sitting behind them.”
“What’s changed is not just the number of risks, but the fact that they are happening simultaneously, and they are connected,” Raphael Borrel (pictured 2nd from the left), chief risk officer at Generali Global Corporate & Commercial UK, said.
“Geopolitical instability can trigger cyber incidents leading directly to BI (business interruption)... (while) climate change exacerbates natural catastrophes which are also major causes of BI.”
Beazley climate risk specialist Nicholas Gough (pictured on the far left) stressed that climate change remains the key emerging risk due to its systemic nature. “It affects every sector, every geography, every supply chain,” he said. “And it doesn’t just create new risks; it increases the severity of existing ones.”
Despite the reality that climate exposures amplify many other risks businesses face, panellists said many corporate clients are struggling to keep climate on the agenda as other disruptions escalate.
“When we talk to clients, they absolutely want to address climate risk, but it often slips behind more immediate crises,” said Streidl. “They know it’s the underlying risk, but they’re stretched. That’s why data-driven engagement matters. You have to show where future exposures are likely to emerge and what actions will meaningfully reduce them.”
Gough noted that brokers and insurers are now extending climate assessments beyond physical damage and into secondary impacts: data-center outages caused by extreme heat, political instability driven by food scarcity, or cyber vulnerabilities created when critical infrastructure fails under climate stress.
“We’re looking across risk classes, not just within them,” Gouh said. “If a region becomes hotter and drier, what does that mean not just for property losses, but for social stability, for migration, for conflict? Climate is upstream of so many other risks.”
Insurers and brokers are updating their own climate risk frameworks at pace, a development that is reshaping the underwriting relationship.
At Beazley, Gough said, that includes developing climate-conditioned catastrophe models, forward-looking scenario analysis tied to global temperature pathways, and new underwriting tools designed to help clients understand where their own exposures are shifting. One example: a metric that maps how US hurricane severity is expected to evolve at specific locations, allowing insureds to make site-level resilience decisions.
Insurers are taking a similar approach, with a growing emphasis on risk partnership rather than simple risk transfer.
“We’re moving from indemnity to resilience,” said Streidl. “The more we can help clients reduce volatility before a loss, the better it is for them and for us.”
Borrel said: "Traditional insurance indemnity products require physical damage. New products such as parametric solutions can be very helpful for the resilience of our customers as they provide immediate funds based on specific, non-damage triggers."
