Risky business: adapting to climate change could ‘insure’ a better future
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Insurance leaders are optimistic that Australia can be more resilient in a climate-challenged future, and they’re learning new ways to deal with risk to get us there
About the episode
You might have come across the term black swan events – commonly used in the insurance space – they’re considered rare occurrences that are almost impossible to predict.
As our climate and weather patterns continue to change at pace, the unexpected is really all we can expect now. How do businesses like insurers plan for risk and implement resilience strategies in the face of uncertainty?
Leading with clarity during these high-pressure events takes a systematic approach, and for James Fitzpatrick, the Chief Technical Officer at Allianz Australia, this is his bread and butter.
James’ industry has plenty to share with leaders in other fields when it comes to planning for "unknown unknowns,” and he explains to host Dr Juliet Bourke how insurers have mapped and modelled the future in the past, how those methods are changing as climate events become increasingly unpredictable, and how the core principles behind those methods can work in other sectors.
Professor Frederik Anseel, Senior Deputy Dean of UNSW Business School, drops in to explain why practice doesn’t always make perfect when it comes to managing risk.
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Transcript
James Fitzpatrick: We ended up with around 60,000 claims from that event, which compares to our full annual of around 90,000. So, we got two-thirds of our annual volume in a three-week period, really tough operationally to work through at a time when you've got large parts of community in desperate need.
Dr Juliet Bourke: The insurance industry has always dealt with predicting the unpredictable and managing black swan events, those rare incidents that don't show up in any risk model or flowchart. But as climate change causes a huge increase in the scale, frequency and coincidence of natural disasters, insurers are learning to adapt their models and operations at lightning pace to stay one step ahead of mother nature.
I'm Dr. Juliet Bourke. And this is The Business Of a podcast from the University of New South Wales Business School. No matter what industry you work in, you've probably dealt with a black swan before. It takes an empathetic mindset to be able to lead with clarity during such high-pressure events.
But for James Fitzpatrick, the Chief Technical Officer at Allianz Australia, this is his bread and butter. So how does James plan for unknown unknowns? And what can leaders learn from him about dealing with crises in the face of climate change. But first, a quick refresher on how the insurance industry works.
James Fitzpatrick: So we collect an insurance premium, and we redistribute that. And that's the core of what we do. But when we talk about climate, and we talk about the really big events that we're going to touch on, that happens at another level across a global scale with reinsurance. So effectively, insurers typically will pay a premium to reinsurers for the exact same protection, but just for the really big events, so and when something does go wrong for our community, then we lean on the reinsurers for helping the same way as people lean on us when something goes wrong for them individually.
Dr Juliet Bourke: So let's move into insurance and climate change. So, you know, obviously, it's important to understand how insurers are thinking about what insurers are doing, can you just open up that journey for us.
James Fitzpatrick: Insurance as industry and protecting people from climatic events is something that we've done for a very long time and is core to our proposition. The reinsurance industry typically priced the cost or the expected losses from natural catastrophes that were insured at around $80 billion or four years ago, over the last three or four years, we've seen the losses broadly, nearly two times that so 130 to 150 billion US dollars per annum in natural disasters. So what we're all seeing and feeling in terms of the news and stories that are coming through, are also directly translating into that global cost of catastrophe. And trying to understand that and how much of that is true change. And how much of that is the natural variation year to year in weather patterns is a real challenge for us. And one way, in constant consideration, I am really worried that we are seeing it move a lot faster than anybody thought it would in terms of certainly the exposure to these extreme events, whether they're the heat waves, or the frequency of hailstorms, the frequency of flooding events, and in extreme rainfall events. They're all dramatically increasing at the moment.
Dr Juliet Bourke: I want you to cast your mind back to 2022 when we had the extreme flooding down the east coast, I remember looking at the pictures of Lismore, for example. Yeah, incredible experience, obviously challenging. I guess the question that I want to ask you is, you've got your day to day routine set. Suddenly you get the phone call. We've got floods in east coast of Australia. What do you do? Day one step one, what do you do?
James Fitzpatrick: That event emerged over three or four weeks. And I remember day one, walking actually to a meeting with one of my colleagues who runs our claims division. And we both said we need to act now. And so that triggers for us all of the emergency responses that we have planned for in terms of increased capacity in terms of being able to help customers manage claims in terms of thinking about how else we need to communicate with customers, because the sheer volume of claims that come through in that events, breaks all of our normal operational rhythms. We don't have the capacity day one to handle the phones. So as much as we try and get people in, people call quickly when something goes wrong, and they expect us to be there for them and so just that turning on the ability to scale up the operation isn’t really simple. That event then went for three weeks and this is before it got to Lismore it started north of Brisbane. And then the rainfall event went all the way down to south of Sydney. So in excess of 1000 kilometres that had an extreme rainfall event, Lismore was a one in 500 year expected level of rainfall. So really outside of what we think is a likely scenario anywhere around the country, but certainly right up and down the East Coast, that volume of rainfall is, is extreme, we ended up with around 60,000 claims from that event, which compares to our full annual kind of expected of around 90,000. So we got two thirds of our annual volume in a three week period, really tough operationally to work through at a time when you've got large parts of community in desperate need. The other thing we trigger immediately is getting people in location, we have a team that we get there that are on the ground, because often people have lost their communication. And being in community enables us to be there to look up their information, help them at a point where they don't even have the basics of a have been able to prove their identity or who they are. Because often they've lost everything but the clothes they're wearing.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Can I take you back to another comment that you made, which was about the floods in 2022? Being a once in a 500 year? Event? Is that how you framed it?
James Fitzpatrick: Yeah, it is. Yeah.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Which sounds like a black swan.
James Fitzpatrick: It is yeah.
Dr Juliet Bourke: What does that actually mean? Once in 500 years? I mean, I you know, the lay meaning for me is it's never going to happen again for 500 years. Yeah. Is that right?
James Fitzpatrick: It's not strictly right. Although that's often a way that people think about it. And when we talk about a one in 500 year flood event, which was the depth in leads more people think about that will happen once every 500 years. It's more of a probability than that. So if it’s plausible it'll happen every second year for three years, but then it might not happen for 5000 years. So it's sort of what's the probability expressed in years, rather than that these happen at a certain frequency?
Dr Juliet Bourke: So is there a better way of expressing it then then once in 500 years, I mean, I can't be the only person who thought you know, it's never going to happen for 500 years? How would you say it to communicate that more clearly?
James Fitzpatrick: I don't know. I think sometimes these concepts get beyond our easy ability to comprehend. And if I look at the visual images when you see Lismore underwater, and what that looks like, I mean, that starts to convey the scale and the severity but also, the unlikeliness of that event being something that's extreme. I think we saw around 1.5 metres of water fall on Lismore and the catchment for Lismore over a three or four day period. But trying to turn that into 1.5 metres deep of water dropped on every part of that river system? And how does that find its way out? And how extreme and how unlikely that level of water is, is just hard to convey? So I'd love to find a better way.
Dr Juliet Bourke : That's gonna be for listeners, they can come back to you, James, you know, send, send all your ideas to James. So how, you know, you talked about being on the ground? You know, that's the sort of short term solution dealing with people in the moment, but sort of longer term? How do you go about how to know if this is the right question, solving the problem dealing with the problem? What's your long term view on it?
James Fitzpatrick: I spoke about the cost of reinsurance or the cost of natural disasters globally, doubling over the last three years that is ultimately finding its way back into people's insurance premiums. Which is because that's the risk that we're facing into. So how do we work to try and make communities more resilient, that that's the way we need to think about how to try and influence and impact the insurance affordability challenges that we're seeing, and we're seeing them get worse?
Dr Juliet Bourke: Yeah, I've definitely heard people say, I just can't afford the insurance anymore. Yeah. So how do you actually in concrete terms, influence, resilience and prevention? Like what are you doing on the ground? And I mean, we've all heard the stories of sort of council planning and telling people don't buy don't build in flood prone areas. But what else is there?
James Fitzpatrick: What's more tangible I think, not building houses in the wrong spot and flood in particular, that's an easy must do, then what more can we do in terms of being more resilient with homes? Some of it's hard we, you know, we're working with a paint company at the moment that has got a product that effectively fireproof the home and we're looking at the possibility of using that in bushfire prone areas. And post a bushfire instead of having significant losses. The paint will effectively require a clean and a wash off and the house should be resilient to that. So that sort of innovation, the design part, and then being really risk aware as individuals as to what risks you face and taking the advice to best prepare that from both your insurer, but also your disaster management, government entities are really important.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that Australia has had a fair share of extreme weather events. So is there anything in the fact that we experience our fair share that can help us solve our own problems faster, potentially even help other countries? Or do we have a depth of experience that puts us in a unique position in a way on climate change resilience?
James Fitzpatrick: I think we do. And I think that when I look at the planning, and the work that's been done in our communities, we are ahead of what we see in many other parts of the world. I think that actually the government response at the moment, the awareness of this as an issue and the awareness that we need to do things differently, is really exciting. The conversations really shifted over the last couple of years. And we're seeing government interest in investing in resilience and finding ways to do that. And they're trying to do that in a way that's informed by what is the biggest risk? And what is the biggest impact? And I think we've got a lot already in terms of knowledge. But I think, as we try these investments, as we try to do different things, some of the relocations that have happened post the last flooding a good example, I think there will be lessons that we can share around the world.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Back to insurance, because you mentioned that it's governments that are learning and putting in place different innovation strategies, I assume that insurers are also learning from the sort of multiple experiences that we're having in Australia, would that be right?
James Fitzpatrick: Yeah, we do. So with every event, we learn a lot, both in terms of the operational response and how we can improve that how we can be more available and more accessible and get people back on their feet faster. A great example of something we did post the Lismore floods last year, which is well, outside of what we imagined when we provided insurance was that because of the sheer scale of loss and the loss of housing, that we had a lot of displaced communities with nowhere to go, we actually bought up a significant number of caravans and gave them to people as alternative accommodation, because we couldn't work out how to find them accommodation near where they wanted to continue to live their lives because it just didn't exist. So that's now something that we're thinking about how do we do that as an ongoing part of our disaster recovery plan to help people because it was a really effective way at giving for those customers that were wanted a quick solution. And in fact, the people that then took that up, were able to be on site, watch the built rebuild of their house, which they loved. And then also keep the caravan post because we chose to give them away.
Dr Juliet Bourke: How many caravans did you give away?
James Fitzpatrick: I don't know the number. But I certainly know there was a couple of caravan dealerships that we took the entire stock, so yeah.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Wow. And so what does that also mean in terms of the way that you now think about risk and price risk and your own premiums - they go to the reinsurers what happens there?
James Fitzpatrick: I mean, certainly we have models for everything I spoke about having sort of teams of Actuaries. And one of the areas is trying to understand this and the potential of these one in 500 events and what they look like and what they'll cost. We recalibrate that we learn from experience. That leaves us to better risk assessment, which ultimately works into pricing, some up some down some down.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Some down? How does that happen? I want to dig into that one for a second. I know you've got a train of thought going there. But I'm, I'm very interested in my insurance premium going down?
James Fitzpatrick: Well, I think what we find is that how water flows through a river system and exactly which parts of landscape are going to be impacted. Every time we have a flooding event that changes and that's a mix of both manmade change in terms of where there's been increased natural absorption or less absorption, which changes the amount of water that's coming through, or just differences in watercourses where construction or other changes that come through. So we see that there's a shift there. And where we see that that's effective and protected a property then that's something that we're super happy and pleased to be able to pass through. Unfortunately, there's also the vice versa where sometimes we see water end up in places that we didn't previously expect.
Dr Juliet Bourke: So does that mean that if we think about the floods in Lismore and east coast of Australia as being a black swan event, that that's actually the wrong nomenclature to use.
James Fitzpatrick: I think in this instance, maybe elements of the flooding, a black swan event, are things that we expect but they were a rare, a rare occurrence. The bit that I would say is unexpected is to see the entire east coast of Australia go through that event at the same time. So when we think about flooding event, historically, it has not extended to three and a half weeks of rainfall. And then if I look at the year in aggregate, we had a total of 12 significant flooding events in addition to that, so to see that year, play out probably is a black swan event in terms of how we looked at the world and beyond what we would have anticipated, albeit any individual event possibly wouldn't be. And that had some unintended consequences. Because where you have a rainfall event in just one system, then the issue that I spoke about in terms of finding people temporary accommodation is far easier. It might not be within 100 or 200 metres of the home, but it might be within 10 kilometres. But that option didn't exist because we had this issue up and down the entire east coast. Then in terms of the rebuild work, and for us, the challenge is operationally with how do we go about sourcing builders, tradesmen, materials was incredibly difficult operationally. And obviously, for us were financing and supporting and project managing this rebuild activity in a situation where we still had huge problems from the supply chain post COVID. And getting building materials into the country, then we had massive issues in terms of the labour force being available, who were often disrupted, to actually do the work to get people back on their feet. At the same time, as we're seeing events happen right around the country, that operational challenge was massive for us led to a lot of frustration with customers things took longer than any of us would have liked to see. So it's been a really difficult year, in terms of the aftermath of that kind of black swan event in aggregate would describe it.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Maybe let's just assume it's not a black swan anymore, that there are some knowns now to those unknowns. I mean, what did you learn operationally so that you could accelerate your path through it?
James Fitzpatrick: Some of the big ones for us is investing more and more into the digital part of our business. And what I mean by that is just how customers can large they can manage, they can do some of this through a digital interface that’s seamless and easy, ideally, but doesn't require people at our end, which is hard for us to suddenly change and scale up to deal with two thirds of our annual volume in a three week period, and particularly complex claims that are going to persist for up to 12 months when you're talking about rebuilding homes. So investing in that is a big area for us. We're also investing in an increased permanent natural catastrophes disaster team that are on standby and ready to respond and has all of the right investments, tools, knowledge information, and at their fingertips to be able to rapidly help people.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Does it threaten very heart of the insurance industry? You know, do you get to a point where you go, this is not a good business to be in?
James Fitzpatrick: I like to think that what we do in insurance is able to survive that, it does get to the heart of who can access insurance. And that goes against everything we stand for in terms of principles, we are a community-based product, we want to enable communities to come together and share their risk and to help those that are in need. So it's the many helping the few we facilitate, which enables people to have confidence to own a house or to drive a car. And if we get to a situation where that becomes unaffordable because of the risks that we're facing. It goes to the heart of what we want to stand for. Even if we're still able to provide a solution for those that can't afford it. I think that's a poor outcome for everyone in community.
Dr Juliet Bourke: And do you have any suggestions as to the way through that or this is just at the moment, an existential crisis and haven't worked it through?
James Fitzpatrick: I'm optimistic and collectively we’ll see an increasing momentum in our response to climate change. And I think I do think the world will respond to the challenge and find a pathway through. But I think we need to and you know, echo the many sentiments we hear around the need for urgent action, there's no doubt that everything I see suggests the same that the problems are getting worse, they're costing us more, they're going to cost us more than the solutions are going to cost. So the quicker that we act, the better we mitigate it. And the better off we'll all be in terms of the future that we're facing into.
Dr Juliet Bourke: How do you then you know, we're facing into people in America and Europe have just experienced a terrible summer that's coming straight at us in Australia. How are you preparing for that in other answers sort of chaotic future?
James Fitzpatrick: I mean, we're certainly very worried about this bushfire season and there's a lot of vegetation and it's going to be based on the long range weather forecast the dry summer so bushfires are likely to be a significant one issue for us. And we sort of touched on for us that's being ready with information, it's informing customers around what they can do to try and manage that risk. So to help people prepare, both in terms of protecting the asset that we insure, but also protecting themselves having a bushfire plan, knowing what they're going to do in the situation that that unfolds and how to look after themselves. And then being ready when something does go wrong for us the operational readiness around having permanently in place NATCAT, or catastrophe management support to help people through that. We're also doing a lot in the mental health area where we're really trying to give people both internally for our staff, but also more broadly, a stronger awareness and tools and things to go through when these things do happen. And this toll on the stress mentally, that we're there to be able to provide that as an additional service to customers to help just cope with the challenges that a tragic event plays out for people.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Is that a new thing providing mental health assistance?
James Fitzpatrick: It's something we've been doing a lot with our personal injury team. And so the personal injury team sort of really road trauma and car accidents as well as workplace injury and how do we best help people and support them through that and also their family members? And I think we see a lot of opportunity to leverage that insight into some new areas in terms of how do we help people through all sorts of other challenges in life circumstances. But yeah, Allianz is really proud of the work that we're doing in that area and helping people.
Dr Juliet Bourke: So, you know, we've talked a lot about these sort of black swan events, no longer black swan events, what do you call them, then White Swan events, these white swan events. And, you know, we can see them increasing into the future, we can see that there are extreme weather events intersecting with each other. So we've got sort of frequency and intensity on the horizon right now. But just projecting that out another 50 years or so, what are you modelling there? What are you imagining for the future?
James Fitzpatrick: Yeah, and I think this is where the modelling is really interesting, because a lot of the models that we kind of rely on, they're all science based by relevant experts, but they tend to forecast a very sort of steady marginal change. And obviously, in 50 years, that ends up in a significantly more volatile world than what we are in today from a weather perspective. But depending on the models, and how that looks, it's within a manageable deviation from today. So if I think about the likelihood of extreme wildfire, it's going to go up, the dry spells are gonna go up, the heats gonna go up, but it's not in a magnitude of 10 times or something in terms of what the models suggest, it might be 1.3 times or 1.4 times which is noticeable but not dramatic. We also see though, and the bit that's really hard is that that represents sort of the median forecast. But the range of uncertainty around that is massive. And if we start to think about what's the degree we could be wrong with those models, and is something like a 10 times the frequency and severity plausible? Well, absolutely is this is not a perfect science that anyone can forecast, we don't know how quickly it's going to change. And we don't know, on which trajectory we're truly on until we get there. So I think that uncertainty is the big thing that worries me. And then this is a bit of a personal view. But when I look at the last three or four years, and the sheer scale of things that have happened, I'm less influenced by what we've seen in Australia, even though that's been dramatic against our trends. But when we look across the world and see country after country, going through the same levels of extreme events that are above the levels that we've seen as historic norms, I am really worried that we're not on that median pathway. And we're on a pathway that is more volatile than what we think we are.
Dr Juliet Bourke: And so what does that mean, if when we look at the world, and not just Australia, and Australia was already sort of ahead of the game, in some ways with having these extreme events early, early on? What does that mean? Like you look at it, and you think it's going to be even more extreme in Australia, or we're going to learn from it. I know, you've talked about, you know, we're probably at the higher end of volatility. But in practical terms, what does that mean for you?
James Fitzpatrick: That's where our focus is, at the moment trying to understand what's possible, what it could look like, what does it mean for different parts of the country? And what's a realistic scenario for the world we're living in in 20 years time or 30 years time? And if that's true, then what would we do today differently? So I don't think we have an answer to that in terms of what it really means, but it certainly means enough that I think we should be really concerned and acting now because it is very likely that it increasingly parts of the country are difficult or classified as uninhabitable for whatever reason, whether it's the severity of events, or just that the climate, it's not a pleasant place to live. And I think that'll mean some form of relocation of community that is going to continue, but also the need to then continue this investment in resilience and rethinking what that really means. So I just think getting that insight and information and the earlier as a community, we can build it into the planning decisions we make, particularly for long term assets, like houses that we want to be there in 30 or 40 years. We need to be planning for that today. And we've got a long way to go before we are doing that well.
Dr Juliet Bourke: I get the what and the how I'm wondering now about the who do we have the leaders today that are going to be able to lead us through that different future? Not you, James, I'm quite convinced that an insurer with purpose is the person I want to be dealing with my insurance issues. Do you have the people that you need in the insurance industry? Who are future fit? Does it take a different kind of insurer, a different kind of leader in in the insurance industry to help lead us forward?
James Fitzpatrick: For sure it does. And I don't know what that exactly looks like. But if I think about are the skills of today going to be relevant in five years time? Probably not. And I don't think leadership is any different to that actually facing into this as a problem leading that both within individual organisations but also collectively as an industry. It's an area of passion for the industry. And I think we'll continue to see that. But do I think that we're ready and where we need to be? No. And I think that we'll continue to learn and hopefully the people involved will adapt and learn and have that impact that we'd all love to see.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Thank you for your transparency. I think that it's true of all industries that we all wonder, do we have the right skills that we need? Are there skills in particular that you're thinking about, that people might need for the five years for the 10 years? Can you see peaks?
James Fitzpatrick: I think some of the areas that matter more is the ability to see our role as a partner. And that solving some of these problems, we have to move from thinking as an individual organisation to one that partners with others and is exceptional at doing that to find shared value for everybody involved. And then the other one that I think is a critical skill is empathy. There's a lot that happens in the world. And a lot of it is not much fun. And there's things that we need to be the face of as an organisation and an industry that have a big impact on people. And to be able to lead in empathic way and support people, I think is important to have an impact.
Dr Juliet Bourke: Our world has already been changed by extreme weather events. And that change is only getting more dramatic. Black Swan events are occurring so often, that we're already wondering if they need a name change. But at least our increased exposure to risk is making us better at understanding it. Or is it? According to Professor Frederik Anseel, that increased exposure might actually be making us worse at understanding risk. Professor Anseel is the Senior Deputy Dean at the University of New South Wales Business School. And he's an expert in how organisations and their leaders adapt to change. So if practice doesn't make perfect when you're learning to manage risk, what does?
Professor Frederik Anseel: We live in a very interesting world, a lot of things are changing, there's turbulence and people see all these different risks and need to try to make an assessment of how will this affect me? How will this affect my company? And how will this affect the decisions I need to make? And what we know from risk perception is that that is not always a rational process. And so if you look at the psychology of decision making on risk, we know a couple of things that people are often not aware of. In UNSW Business School and UNSW more broadly, we have these wildly smart people doing research on those things.
And sometimes that research comes from very unexpected sort of corners of research.
And so for instance, I'll highlight someone that I admire a lot, and that is Professor Elise Payzan. Elise is a financial economist, but she combines her research on financial decision making under risk circumstances with psychological and neuroscience research. And so what she would do to study how people make financially risky decisions, she would actually put people in a scanner and look at their brain so she does brain scans, she would look at what is lighting up when people are sort of considering the risks and the trade offs when they're making a decision. And so she is actually looking at black swan events and what happens when people need to judge very, very rare error events and need to make a decision on how risky is this about to happen? What are the consequences of this? And so this type of research, I think gives us unique insights, how we make decisions, because often we ask people, so how did you make that decision, but it's quite different.
If you actually are able to look in someone's brain, that can be financial leaders, that can be people who are responsible for insurance policies, looking into their brain, while they're making that decision shows better what type of pieces of information they are considering when they're making that decision. And while that is a unique person, we can sort of think about the implications for any type of business. And I'll give you an example. In our business school, recent research has found for instance, it's very interesting that when you're in a very high volatility periods, and so a lot of things are changing. And if you just look at the world, right now, there's so much happening geopolitically, that there's not only climate, there's energy questions. And when a lot of different things are happening, people's risk perceptions adjust to the high volatility of things that are happening. And that becomes like the new normal. And so whenever then the volatility drops a bit, people will see that as a low risk environment, while actually it is still elevated. But because people have adjusted to all that turbulence, any sort of normal level, they would see as low risk. And so people make the wrong adjustments.
And so people could make decisions for their company that are actually more risky than they intended to be, because they are misperceiving, the risk in the environment. So to mitigate these sort of things, you almost need to sort of tie your own hands behind your back and say, “Look, I know that I'm vulnerable to these sort of processes, I'm not the best person probably to assess risk”. And so what you would want to do is have the sort of built processes and structures that will do the risk assessment for you. So you want to make sure that it happens in a systematic way, you want to make sure that it happens in a rational way on the basis of stats and figures. And so this is exactly what we would recommend people to do is basically that you develop scenarios, and each different area where you have identified a risk and then map out what the consequences would be for each of those scenarios. What we actually want is people to acknowledge that no one has a crystal ball, you cannot predict the future. But what you can probably do is predict several scenarios and then map the consequences of those scenarios. And then you can probably make better decisions because you are more aware of the different trade-offs involved in those scenarios.
Dr Juliet Bourke: It seems that risk is an unusually difficult concept for us to understand. And the leader is constantly dealing with climate-related risks and disasters. That's scary to think about. So as Professor Anseel suggests, we need to remember what normal looks like when we're assessing risk. To do that properly, we might need to actually step away and let well-designed systems do the work for us. As a business leader, even if you can't accurately predict what's going to happen, you can plan for a wide range of scenarios. And when yet another black swan raises its head, keep calm and add it to the risk matrix.
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