Speaking at its Spring Meeting held online last week, Richard Turner, President of the International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI) reinstated the association’s focus on facilitating a sustainable, resilient and innovative future for the marine insurance industry.
As Richard Turner explains, Environmental, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) issues are impacting all forms of business, including marine insurance.
IUMI believes that the industry will be affected in three ways.
- Climate change and the related rise in sea levels will impact the frequency and severity of claims.
- The evolution of the transport assets we insure and changes to the cargoes will also be significant and IUMI sees the impact as the industry adopts low sulphur fuels.
- It is becoming increasingly clear that some industries will have the opportunity to grow and develop while others will shrink as the world moves to a more sustainable footing.
IUMI is now actively lobbying to raise relevant issues, monitor response and agitate for change. Many issues already on IUMI’s policy agenda have a sustainability impact including arctic sailing and low sulphur fuels.
Building on a comprehensive member survey conducted more than a year ago, we are continuing our advocacy activity on a number of key issues. This has led to the formation of a sub-committee of IUMI’s executive committee to focus specifically on ESG issues. In addition, we are proud to be a supporting institution of the UN’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance
Richard Turner continues.
ESG issues will be further reinforced at this year’s IUMI annual conference, which will be staged virtually from Seoul, Korea 2-15 September 2021, where the common theme will be “Pathways to a sustainable, resilient and innovative future”.
This year’s common theme is both optimistic and forward looking, and we aim to cover the opportunities and risks that marine insurance is likely to face in a continuing and post pandemic world. We will discuss the various options and pathways that marine insurance should pursue to ensure sustainability, both in terms of ESG issues but also to maintain marine underwriting as a healthy and resilient activity
Mr. Turner concludes.