AXA Climate bulks up global-warming risk training

Climate-related disasters have become the top concern of today’s risk managers.

Risk managers feel increasingly insecure about their clients’ vulnerability to natural disasters, according to the AXA Future Risks Report 2022. (Onur/Adobe Stock)

Exposures and losses due to environmental natural disasters now top this list of concerns for risk managers, according to the AXA Future Risks Report 2022.

Geopolitical risks are the second highest worry and concern today’s risk managers more than cybersecurity exposures or pandemic risks.

AXA Climate, the sustainable insurance and consulting subsidiary of the AXA Group, has responded to climate change-related insecurity among risk managers with The Climate School, an e-learning program developed in partnership with Arengi, an independent consultancy dedicated to governance and risk management and compliance solutions.

“Today, companies are undergoing profound transformations in order to anticipate and reduce the impacts of growing climate risks,” Antoine Poincaré, head of The Climate School at AXA Climate, said in a press release about the new e-learning program. “Risk Managers have an essential role to play in this transformation. With this training, we give them the means to contribute fully, by developing good practices and helping them to better identify the opportunities that can be seized.”

The Climate School coursework was developed with the idea that the role of risk managers is changing due to the challenges created by more frequent and severe natural catastrophes. The e-learning addresses such questions as:

This is the ninth year that AXA conducted its Future of Risks Report, a global survey that measures and ranks industry concerns about emerging risks. Its findings were based on responses from 4,500 risk managers from 58 countries, AXA says.

“The 2022 edition of AXA’s Future Risk Report describes an overheated world, where crises are stacked on each other,” AXA CEO Thomas Buberl said in a statement about the report. “It also confirms underlying trends such as the fear of climate change, a heightened sense of vulnerability among populations and the decline in trust in major institutions to find sustainable solutions. These trends point to an additional risk, the feeling of powerlessness, at a time when we need the mobilization of all actors to provide collective, innovative and coordinated responses. The insurance sector in particular, can contribute its expertise in terms of prevention and protection.”

See also: