UN, microinsurance community forge global partnership for sustainable development
UN Environment’s Principles for Sustainable Initiative and the Microinsurance Network have joined forces to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals
An unprecedented global partnership has been forged to promote inclusive and sustainable insurance markets around the world and to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative (PSI), and 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 $121 billion.
“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.
“We are committed to achieving our vision of a world where people of all income levels—particularly the underserved—are more resilient and less vulnerable to daily and catastrophic risks, “ said Katharine Pulvermacher, executive director of the Microinsurance Network.
“We believe that access to insurance and better risk management to reduce vulnerability, are essential to sustainable development, and the world’s poor will not achieve lasting prosperity without them. We wholeheartedly support the Principles for Sustainable Insurance and are committed to supporting the development and expansion of insurance services that are sustainable as well as socially inclusive.”
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,” added Bacani.
The PSI and the Microinsurance Network have identified various areas of collaboration, including knowledge sharing, policy engagement, capacity building, and events. The collaboration will harness the insurance industry’s role in helping communities reduce risk through good risk management practices, in absorbing financial shocks and enabling economic activity through insurance solutions, and in financing the transformation to a sustainable economy through investments.