Parties Differ Over Climate Disclosure Proposal

March 31, 2008 – An NAIC proposal to have insurers make mandatory climate risk disclosure statements was met with strong differences in opinions at the NAIC spring national meeting in Orlando, Florida.

Industry trade association representatives said the proposal was speculative at best, and they argued that climate science was still sufficiently unresolved to allow insurers to properly assess climate risk.

Proponents of the proposal claimed that the insurance industry needed to follow mandatory disclosures in order to give regulators more insight into their risks, and that a national standard was ultimately better than states taking their own individual actions.

Wisconsin Insurance Commissioner Sean Dilweg, chair of the NAIC Climate Change and Global Warming (EX) Task Force, said regulators would continue to take comments on the proposal through April 15.

Click here to view the draft climate risk disclosure memorandum.

Click here to view the latest version of the Task Force’s white paper.

View interested party comments on draft climate risk disclosure memorandum.

• American Insurance Association

• Ceres/National Resources Defense Council/Center for Economic Justice

• National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies

• Property Casualty Insurers Association of America

• Reinsurance Association of America