The Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative partners with the Microinsurance Network
UN Environment’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative (PSI), the largest collaboration between the United Nations and the insurance industry, announced its partnership with the Microinsurance Network, a global multi-stakeholder platform for the international microinsurance community of experts and institutions.
UN Environment’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative (PSI), the largest collaboration between the United Nations and the insurance industry, announced its partnership with the Microinsurance Network, a global multi-stakeholder platform for the international microinsurance community of experts and institutions.
The PSI-Microinsurance Network partnership is expected to advance the social and financial inclusion dimension of sustainable insurance with the goal of closing the insurance protection gap.
Katharine Pulvermacher, Executive Director of the Microinsurance Network said: “We are committed to achieving our vision of a world where people of all income levels—particularly the underserved, are more resilient and less vulnerable to daily and catastrophic risks”.
She added: “We believe that access to insurance and better risk management to reduce vulnerability are essential to sustainable development, and the world’s poor will not achieve lasting prosperity without them”.
The PSI is endorsed by the UN to serve as a global framework for the insurance industry to address environmental, social and governance challenges—such as climate change, natural disasters, ecosystem degradation, financial exclusion, human rights violations, health risks, and corruption.
The PSI and the Microinsurance Network have already set the ground for various areas of collaboration, like for example knowledge sharing, policy engagement, capacity building, and events.
The collaboration will strengthen the insurance industry’s role in climate charge mitigation and adaptation efforts, which includes deploying good risk management practices, absorbing financial shocks, enabling economic activity through insurance solutions and financing the transformation to a sustainable economy through investments.
According to Swiss Re Group, the insurance protection gap between economic losses from all disaster events and insured losses was $121 billion.
Craig Churchill, who leads the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Impact Insurance Facility commented: “This partnership is necessary. Development is unsustainable if it only serves the few, and if it leads to environmental degradation and extreme events that set back hard-won development gains”.
The insurance industry constitutes one of the most proactive proponents of climate change mitigation efforts, and is said to have played a pivotal role in the outcome of COP 21 and the Paris Agreement.