As nature-related risks become increasingly material to insurers and reinsurers, the PSI Climate–Nature Nexus Atlas offers an emerging framework for integrating ecosystem insights into underwriting, risk assessment and decision-making.
The IFoA is a supporting institution of the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI). As part of last month’s London Climate Action Week, the PSI Working Group for Nature launched its Climate–Nature Nexus Atlas (PDF, 4.1MB). It is now opening this work for wider review and is welcoming feedback from a range of stakeholders.
The Climate-Nature Nexus Atlas is a practical framework designed to make nature more visible and actionable within insurance underwriting. Specifically, how the extent and condition of ecosystems can influence hazard, exposure and vulnerability, and therefore shape insured risk outcomes.
The Atlas brings together an emerging evidence base linking ecosystems to climate-related perils, alongside an initial structure for how this information could inform underwriting processes, data gathering and risk assessment over time.
The intention is not to present a finalised methodology, but to open the work up to scrutiny, challenge and refinement across the market. The Working Group are keen to ensure that the approach is both scientifically robust and operationally relevant - grounded in how insurers actually make decisions.
The Working Group would value perspectives on the clarity and usability of the framework, the strength and applicability of the evidence base, how this could be integrated into existing risk and underwriting processes, and priority areas for further development. They welcome feedback using the following feedback form, which will be open until 31 August.
The IFoA’s latest Planetary Solvency report, 'Tipping into the wild unknown', highlights how Nature is our most critical infrastructure. We therefore support these practical efforts to improve everyone’s awareness and engagement with nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities. We encourage everyone’s participation in this collaborative effort to provide insurers and reinsurers with a comprehensive framework to map their climate-nature nexus.
The PSI Working Group for Nature is a global, multi-stakeholder collaboration bringing together insurers, reinsurers, brokers and technical experts to advance how nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities are understood and integrated into insurance practice.
The group is building on earlier work, including the Nature Uncovered for Insurers series and the broader PSI guidance suite, and it has evolved to focus on developing more applied and decision-useful approaches for underwriting and risk management.
Today, the group comprises over 50 insurers and industry participants alongside more than 20 technical partners, working collectively to address a clear methodological gap in how nature is reflected in insurance decision-making.
If you wish to engage further with the PSI Working Group for Nature, please contact either:
José Oviedo - jose.oviedovazquez@un.org
Verena Kraus - verena.kraus@un.org
