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WASHINGTON — Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury hosted a virtual roundtable with insurance industry stakeholders to discuss how the increased risks from climate change are affecting U.S. insurance markets. Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang and other senior Treasury officials led discussions with insurers, reinsurers, and catastrophe modeling firms on challenges that climate change poses to the U.S. insurance industry and to American households. Participants also discussed the regulatory and policy responses that states and localities are undertaking to address those challenges, as well as potential market responses.

Today’s event was conducted in support of President Biden’s Executive Order 14030, which leverages a government-wide approach to addressing climate-related financial risk. In the Executive Order, President Biden called on the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) to: (1) “assess climate-related issues or gaps in the supervision and regulation of insurers” and (2) “further assess, in consultation with States, the potential for major disruptions of private insurance coverage in regions of the country particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts.”  

The roundtable discussion follows this month’s launch of FIO’s collaboration with state insurance regulators and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to collect ZIP-Code level insurance data to better understand the impacts of climate-related financial risks on the insurance industry as well as Treasury’s roundtable with consumer and climate groups last month. It also supplements other Treasury work on climate-related financial risk, including FIO’s June 2023 report on Insurance Supervision and Regulation of Climate-Related Risks. FIO will continue to monitor the nationwide insurance industry and closely coordinate with the states, which are the primary regulators of the insurance industry.

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