Finity climate leaders join UN-linked global team to assess climate change risks

Finity’s climate leaders Rade Musulin and Sharanjit Paddam have joined an UN-linked global team to assess the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Working Group I (WGI) Report - which looks at risks arising from climate change and their impact.

The group produced a report entitled “Climate Science: A Summary for Actuaries – What the IPCC Climate Change Report 2021 Means for the Actuarial Profession”, which summarised information relevant to actuaries from the thousands of pages of material published by WGI. The report focuses on how the physical impacts of climate change affect how risks are underwritten, priced, managed and reported globally for general insurers, super funds, life insurers and financial institutions.

The report highlights the crucial role actuaries play globally in risk assessment and climate change.  Finity’s Rade Musulin, one of the report’s lead authors, said, “That the IPCC would take the time to work with actuaries on this report shows that the actuarial community is an important stakeholder in climate risk analysis.”

The report states: “Actuaries are particularly interested in the effect of climate change on floods, droughts, fires, storms and air pollution but each of the physical changes analysed in the latest IPCC Working Group I report could have an impact on human well-being and the long-term sustainability of the environment.”

Rade Musulin and Sharanjit Paddam were part of a team under the direction of the Climate Risk Task Force of the International Actuarial Association (IAA) which worked with the WGI Technical Support Unit of the IPCC. The IPCC is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change while the working group assesses the physical science of climate change.

 The IAA team included actuaries and catastrophe modellers from Australia, Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan. The IPCC WGI included more than 234 scientists from 65 countries working together for more than three years. Learn more here.