Five American states now require insurers’ responses to climate risk survey

Five American states are now requiring insurers to respond to a climate risk survey, adopted in 2009 by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

The Connecticut and Minnesota Departments of Insurance have now joined California, New York and Washington in requiring the response.

California’s insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, said Wednesday that the state will also expand the scope of the survey, requiring all companies writing more than $100 million in direct written premiums to respond, doubling the number of insurers required to do so.

The survey contains eight questions that measure companies’ responses to the impact of climate change, including questions about carbon footprint reduction plans to risk management for a changing environment, according to the California Department of Insurance.

The NAIC’s climate change task force, created in 2006, which helped create the survey, was disbanded in 2011, although the multi-state initiative continued collecting data.

“As insurance regulators, it is important that we identify those climate-related factors that can affect the marketplace and in particular the availability and cost of insurance,” Connecticut’s insurance commissioner Thomas B. Leonardi noted in a statement.

“These surveys give us another window into the industry’s risk management practices as they relate to changing weather patterns,” he added.