Oct. 22, 2007 Insurers are now offering more than 400 climate-related products and services to tackle climate change double the number available just over a year ago, according to a new report Ceres, a nonprofit investors' coalition.

The report, From Risk to Opportunity 2007: Insurer Responses to Climate Change (PDF), identifies 422 innovative products, services, and other activities from 190 insurers, reinsurers, brokers, and insurance organizations in 26 countries. These new insurance initiatives include green building credits, drought-protection in developing countries, and incentives for renewable-energy investment and carbon emissions trading.

Insurers are beginning to respond to global warming , and not just by withdrawing from coastal markets with high financial exposure, says Mindy S. Lubber, president of Ceres. Were seeing a rapid proliferation of products that will reduce climate-related financial losses, as well as the pollution causing global warming."

Some examples of these new products include the following:

• Lexington Insurance Company, a member company of American International Group (AIG), will introduce this fall, Upgrade to Green, a first-of-its-kind green homeowners property insurance policy offered in the U.S., and is simultaneously offering a product for commercial buildings.
  


• Japans Sompo Insurance has given premium discounts to 3.25 million policyholders that drive low-emitting cars, and Tokio Marine and Nichido have signed up 6.23 million policyholders, or 48% of its total auto policy customer base, to receive discounts for driving low-mileage or low-emitting vehicles.


• Munich Re and Swiss Re are offering micro-insurance in parts of the developing world where insurance did not previously exist. Swiss Re's new Climate Change Adaptation Program uses climate models and satellite data to determine when up to $2 million weather-related claims are to be paid in response to severe drought conditions causing food shortages in villages in Kenya, Mali and Ethiopia. Swiss Re has also sold weather-risk products to 320,000 small farmers in India.
  

The report finds, however, that despite the impressive increase in recent activity, most insurance companies are still not focused on the climate change issue and fewer still are offering climate-related products.

The new insurance offerings are an impressive beginning considering the near-universal lack of interest in climate change among U.S. insurers as recently as three years ago, says Dr. Evan Mills, the reports author and a scientist with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In September, leading insurers signed on to a list of green principles aimed at pushing the industry to help mitigate and better manage the risks of climate change.