An Investigation on the status of Iran's insurance industry in the underwriting of climate change

Global warming and as a result the phenomenon of climate change have caused significant changes such as increasing temperature, increasing atmospheric hazards, and decreasing rainfall in recent decades in different regions of the world, especially mid-latitudes like Iran. Providing appropriate strategies for climate change insurance plays an important role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. This research has been done in order to investigate the situation of Iran's insurance industry in the underwriting of climate change. Therefore, in the beginning, insurance plans and coverage and climate change risk management strategies are reviewed in selected developed and developing countries. Then, the experiences of global surveys, including questioning based on the exposure of the American insurance industry, the climate change survey of the Bermuda Monetary Authority, the global survey of the financial plan of the United Nations Environment Program, and the insurance survey of the Scandinavian region regarding climate change are used in order to develop a questionnaire in line with the current situation of Iran country in the field of climate change insurance. Finally, the results of the questionnaire’s analysis distributed among 35 insurance experts on climate change risk management, show that some insurance companies, despite predicting the impact of climate risks in their insurance processes and empowering their employees, don’t have any plan for the assessment and mitigation of greenhouse gases, regular assessment of climate hazards, providing incentives and modeling. Also, the strategy of annual re-pricing and risk-based pricing has the highest priority to face climate change in insurance companies. JEL classification: Q54, G22