UN and world’s microinsurance community forge global partnership

Written by Adam Cadle

31/08/2017

The UN Environment’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative and the Microinsurance Network have joined forces to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

A global partnership has been forged to promote inclusive and sustainable insurance markets around the world.

The PSI-Microinsurance Network partnership will advance the social and financial inclusion dimension of sustainable insurance with the goal of closing the insurance protection gap—the gap between economic losses from all disaster events and insured losses. According to Swiss Re, the global insurance protection gap in 2016 was $121bn.

“Sustainable development requires recognising that economic, social and environmental sustainability are interlocking and mutually reinforcing. Therefore, poverty eradication, social equity, good health, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation and mitigation are all part of a unified agenda. In this context, social and financial inclusion has been an integral pillar of the sustainable insurance agenda from the outset,” said Butch Bacani, who leads the PSI at UN Environment.

Endorsed by the UN Secretary-General and insurance CEOs, the PSI serves as a global framework and global collaborative initiative for the insurance industry to address environmental, social and governance challenges—such as climate change, natural disasters, ecosystem degradation, financial exclusion, human rights violations, health risks, and corruption—and to strengthen the industry’s contribution to sustainable development.

“The UN Sustainable Development Goals are premised on the pledge of ‘leaving no one behind’. This landmark partnership to build inclusive and sustainable insurance markets underscores that in order to fulfil that pledge, we must reach out to those behind first,” Bacani added.

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