Blue Marble, meanwhile, brings together insurance companies, satellite-data firms and NGOs to deliver parametric insurance products that trigger automatic payouts based on rainfall or temperature data. These investments go beyond payouts and also help create early-warning systems.
Here, philanthropy’s role is structural: funding research, product design, and consumer education across the full bundle of tools. Philanthropy can also co-finance premium subsidies in early pilots, demonstrating viability until private or public mechanisms take over.
And thirdly, philanthropy can help to leverage public and private sector engagement.
Insurance markets will not be able to pay for a warming world. They are, instead, part of a broader set of tools. Governments can lead by integrating insurance into national adaptation plans and utilising their existing social protection schemes. Further, they can co-finance climate insurance schemes, attracting private insurance markets to participate.
Corporates have a direct interest in insurance to manage risk in their supply chains. In commodities such as coffee, cocoa and cotton, climate volatility disrupts production and drives worker vulnerability. Insurance can protect smallholders and buyers by cushioning shocks that ripple through value chains.
In both cases, philanthropy has a role to play in supporting advocacy for critical reforms. This includes de-risking innovation by funding pilots, and supporting evidence gathering on how insurance stabilises supply chains and generates returns, unlocking corporate co-investment far beyond philanthropic budgets.
Laudes Foundation and Howden Foundation are working through ClimateWorks Adaptation and Resilience Collaborative (ARC) to operationalise these ideas in a new insurance sub-stream led by Howden Foundation, bringing together donors and practitioners to align funding and advance policy solutions. We invite interested organisations to join us in this effort.
Insurance markets will not evolve inclusively on their own. Philanthropy can play a key role in building insurance as climate infrastructure.
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