Insurers assessed on their ability to absorb climate shocks

Since the beginning of July, heat strokes have followed one another in the world. And it's certainly not over. Global warming could cause an increase in natural disasters by 2050. This poses risks to insurers and soars their prices. The French insurance policeman, the ACPR, has just launched a stress test aimed at assessing the sector's ability to absorb climatic shocks. Houses cracked by drought, flooding of neighborhoods and industrial areas, storms… the question is crucial, especially since in the event of too marked a rise in prices, some French people could give up covering themselves. And companies could refuse to insure goods that are too exposed.

These are the second stress tests in two years. “In 2021, the ACPR considered that the exposure of banks and insurers was moderate, but that the sector was exposed to a risk of a sharp increase in claims in certain departments”, recalls Nathalie Aufauvre, secretary general of the Authority. prudential supervision and resolution (ACPR). For this edition, the authority will test two hypotheses for 2050: a gradual climate transition and a more brutal transition. Newly, the ACPR will also assess the effects of a short-term scenario, with two years marked by drought, followed, at the start of 2025, by exceptional rainfall. “In the short term, we will assume that insurers do not have the capacity to change the structure of their balance sheets and will suffer the materialization of shocks”, explains Laurent Clerc, director of research at the ACPR.