The speech by Geoff Summerhayes, Executive Board Member of APRA, at the Insurance Council of Australia Annual Forum in Sydney last week made it very clear that the regulator now sees climate change as completely real and something that must be priced into premiums and tested as a system-wide risk for the insurance industry.  He also reminded the audience that company directors may be found personally liable if they do “fail to properly consider and disclose foreseeable climate-related risks to their business”.

“I think the days of viewing climate change within a purely ethical, environmental or long-term frame have passed. More and more, the conversations we are having are about the practical realities and consequences of a changing climate. One reason for this is that we now have a much more sophisticated, granular, quantifiable understanding of the impacts, risks and probability distributions around climate change. This is true on the planetary scale.”

It’s amazing that now we have regulators, banks, insurance companies, the Business Council of Australia, state governments and the general public accepting that climate change is very real and needs to be addressed, yet our Federal Government continues to hide their head in the sand or bow to the climate deniers in their party.

Full article – http://www.apra.gov.au/Speeches/Pages/Australias-new-horizon.aspx