WTW’s Dunlop calls for “common standards and approaches” to improve ESG collaboration

WTW’s managing director Nick Dunlop said the (re)insurance industry must develop some “common standards and approaches” in order to improve its response to climate and ESG risk so “we can make it easier for each other”.

In an interview with The Insurer TV Dunlop also reflected on the need for closer collaboration between the insurance industry and risk managers to ensure a more effective response to climate risk moving forward.

“Very simply, climate is a risk issue and we’re very keen to make this point the centre of the climate debate we’re having,” he said.

The need for closer collaboration, combined with the rapid emergence of technology, is prompting the industry to lean more heavily on data to come up with insights into how best to help their clients on the climate and ESG front.

“We’re seeing insurers asking for all sorts of new types of data, we’re seeing clients looking at better ways that they can present data to markets around climate and ESG to optimise their approach,” Dunlop said.

But Dunlop added that collection of such data to help gather insights is not driven by any common standards or approaches, and that he would like to see this being developed, which could result in more effective collaboration.

As a consequence of the lack of standardisation, there are questions over whether the collected data could be useful to provide insights. Similarly, there could be issues around whether the correct insights are being taken from data.

“I think that insurers are collecting a lot of data,” he said. “They’re not entirely sure yet what they’re going to do with it. I think we do need to come together – all stakeholders within the business – to get a little bit more order around what it is we want to collect, why we want to collect it and what we’re going to do with it at the end of the day. It would make everybody’s life, frankly, a lot easier,” Dunlop said.

He also added that there must be a concentration of efforts to ensure collaboration is effectively achieved, given that climate change is a long-term problem.

“Climate is an emerging issue and the (re)insurance industry must find a way of managing the risks associated with it,” he added.

But this is why it’s also more important than ever to get together at events, such as Airmic, to discuss these issues.

There’s an “important edge” to Airmic, said Dunlop.

“It’s at these events where you start to see the sort of intellectual horsepower of the industry very visibly come together to look at issues and a lot has happened.

“We’ve seen a world change immeasurably in terms of risk and I think we need to come together to debate those issues, listen to our clients so we can start to crystallize some solutions to solve some of these problems.”

Dunlop spoke to The Insurer TV ahead of the start of Airmic 2022. During the 10-minute interview, Dunlop reflects on: