CSAA Insurance Group—an insurer from AAA—will help innovate the insurance industry and participate in a variety of initiatives fighting climate risk.
CSAA: WE’RE ALL ON THE SAME SIDE WHEN IT COMES TO FIGHTING CLIMATE RISK
“We’ve been on a journey to reduce our environmental footprint for some period,” said Debbie Brackeen, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer with CSAA, during a recent executive exchange with Triple-I CEO Sean Kevelighan.
“We are working to cut our carbon footprint by 50 percent by 2025. We view this work as aligned with our mission: to help our members prepare for and recover from climate risk.”
Among others, CSAA has taken the following steps toward achievement of these goals:
Leading the first-ever Innovation Challenge on climate resilience with IDEO and Aon, along with several other sponsors;
Working on the California Innovation Fund in partnership with Blue Forest—a $50 million fund with CSAA contributing half of that capital focused on forest restoration and reducing fuel in a smart and sustainable way; an Such efforts include funding the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University, which engages in predictive modeling work, among other activities.
Of course, none of this is new to the insurers, Kevelighan said.
“We have watched the ESG movement take a hold during the past two to three years, but it has been in the DNA of the Triple-I and in the insurance industry generally for many years,” said Kevelighan. “More than half the battle is recognizing that the risk is increasing, while identifying solutions.”
“There were billion-dollar wildfire losses at CSAA in my first two years in the industry,” Brackeen said. “I wondered if this was normal. It ignited in me that, whatever we do in innovation, it will have to do with wildfire risk.
However, what really makes a difference to me is that risks are becoming uninsurable. This results from the compounding effect of many different kinds of losses, especially convective storms.”
“We have to look for other types of innovative partnerships to solve these problems,” Brackeen said in closing. “We are fighting for our very industry, and in this fight, there are no competitors. We have to be on the same side of the table.”
