Climate change is once again a top-of-mind issue around the world as the regions around the world — most notably the U.K. — suffer from record heat waves. Coming on the heels of historic flooding and "once in a generation" hurricanes that continue to occur almost every year, climate change is having a huge impact on society. Insurers can play a key part in helping manage the effect of climate change by engaging more deeply with customers, policymakers, regulators and the other parts of the ecosystem.

For as unsettling as the COVID-19 pandemic was to the insurance industry, climate change is already eclipsing the pandemic as the most disruptive force the industry has ever faced. Insurers have traditionally been incredibly successful at building risk models that identify and navigate risk incredibly well. These models have been grounded in decades of research and are painstakingly reviewed and tweaked around the various fundamental data points they were built upon. But what happens when these "tried and true" data points are suddenly no longer relevant? Insurers need to adapt in order to stay in the black, and by proxy customers need to as well.