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Property/casualty groups stress resilience to extreme weather: statement

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A group of five major property/casualty insurance groups issued a joint statement emphasizing their commitment to risk mitigation and promoting resilience in the face of extreme weather.

The statement reflects the group’ participation in the White House’s June roundtable meeting on climate resilience and insurance.

Participants discussed how to mitigate increasing economic consequences of extreme weather and other climate-related risks. They also discussed potential collaborative efforts to better identify, communicate, and reduce the costs of weather-related events.

In Tuesday's statement, the five groups — the American Insurance Association; the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety; the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies; the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America and the Reinsurance Association of America — said that the property insurance industry:

• is committed to helping people and communities in every region of the country prepare for extreme weather and other natural hazards;

• shares concerns about reducing the economic impacts of recurring extreme weather;

• has an acute interest in reducing physical, economic, and social costs associated with extreme weather;

• understands the importance of broadly available insurance coverage to increase economic resilience; and,

• actively works to enhance resilience and pre-event property loss mitigation, as well as to enable rapid and less costly recovery after disasters.

The statement noted that the property insurance industry and the Obama administration “are engaging in a dialogue about effective ways to better identify, communicate, and reduce the physical and economic risks and costs of extreme weather, and to increase resilience to such events.” They listed as goals for the dialogue as:

• Encouraging states, communities, and Native American nations to adopt prudent, hazard-specific land use measures and strong codes and standards for both new and existing buildings to increase resilience to present and future risks.

• Articulating common messages about levels of risk and vulnerability posed by extreme weather — including using market-based mechanisms to more directly match insurance coverage to relative risk.

• Supporting and utilizing research and targeted incentives (such as tax credits, loans, or grants) to promote effective loss mitigation, in order to reduce current and future risk to people, property, natural features, ecosystems, and critical infrastructure.

• Sharing science-based information to better inform public policy and decision-making at all levels of government and commerce, including analyses of the benefits and costs of property mitigation measures.

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