The intense debates around climate change are heating up, with scientists in opposite corners when it comes to opinions on global warming, rising CO2 levels and melting polar ice caps. The one thing that is evident, however, is that extreme weather events have increased in the past two decades, and this is having a significant impact on the insurance industry.

South Africans are experiencing more intense and frequent hail storms, severe droughts, changing rainfall patterns and heavy flooding, which have all led to costly storm damage claims. “The chance of a 15-minute freak hailstorm in Gauteng, resulting in millions of rands worth of damage and thousands of insurance claims, was minimal a few years ago,” says Peter Olyott, CEO of Indwe Risk Services. “The insurance landscape has changed forever – and insurers and policy holders need to adapt accordingly,” states Olyott.

The problem for the insurance industry is that risk prediction has been guided by past loss and probabilities, but with weather conditions changing so rapidly, how they traditionally model risk needs to change. Climate change can’t be ignored or underestimated, as extreme weather results in greater damages and more payouts, and the insurance industry is going to have to create new ways of doing business.

Unpredictable weather also has a dramatic effect on the private, business and agricultural sectors, and insurers are recommending that everyone should be aware of what is covered in their policies. Farmers, for example, are more exposed to natural hazards and this may cause the industry to raise premiums, resulting in unaffordable cover in the agricultural sector. This in turn may force government to support farmers to carry the risk.

The bottom line is that while people can do little to control the weather, however they can control their insurance. 

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