The WSJ details how insurance carriers have had to adjust premiums to account for climate change in certain geographies. However predictions of the fallout of climate change are often imprecise.
The price of homes on the U.S.’s eastern seaboard battered by fiercer storms and higher seas is lagging behind those inland. The price of farmland is rising in North America’s once-frigid reaches, partly because of bets it will become more temperate. Investors are turning fresh water into an asset, a wager in part that climate change will make it scarcer. Insurers are at the forefront of calculating the impact. “We don’t discuss the question anymore of, ‘Is there climate change,’” says Torsten Jeworrek, chief executive for reinsurance at Munich Re, the world’s largest seller of reinsurance—insurance for insurers. “For us, it’s a question now for our own underwriting.” Unseasonably hot conditions contributed to the severity of the Fort McMurray wildfire in 2016, according to NASA scientists.
https://www.wsj.com/graphics/climate-change-forcing-insurance-industry-recalculate/