Insurance vulnerabilities Moldova

Accessible risk transfer mechanisms facilitate sustained growth by helping poor rural households to escape the classic poverty trap that is caused by shock losses resulting in difficulties with carrying on with production in the subsequent season (8).

The interplay between the public sector and the private insurance industry, which forms an important aspect of a functioning risk transfer scheme for natural hazards, does not work well in Moldova. As a result, insurance depth is low and most damages resulting from natural hazards have to be borne by individuals, especially the rural poor. There seem to be three remaining plausible reasons for low insurance depth in Moldova (8):

• Low income;
• Lack of public risk information;
• Existence of public funds that also compensate victims.

Agriculture remains one of the most underinsured sectors in Moldova. The share of agricultural insurance in the insurance market is extremely low, representing only 5.4% of the total gross written premiums in 2008. Insurance clients are mainly formed of large-scale farmers (9). The current design of the Moldovan agricultural risk transfer scheme has the following drawbacks (8):

• The scheme is (or has the potential to become) expensive for the state due to governmental premium subsidies and ex-post disaster relief;
• The governmental ex-post disaster assistance is likely to provide poor incentives;
• Agricultural insurance seems not to be affordable for poor farmers.

Business opportunities Moldova

The number of new opportunities to offer new products and services increases. For example, there are new technologies for recycling, biogas production, and new techniques for fertiliser production. Authorities should support and facilitate this new direction on the market and create appropriate incentives for businesses to become sustainable and be promoters of sustainability, in other words to become partners. The private sector, on the other hand, should understand and accept regulations and practices that, while more costly for the private sector in the short run, will ensure better adaptation in the long run (8).

Insured losses - Globally

Globally, insured and total property losses are rising faster than premiums, population, or economic growth; inflation adjusted economic losses from catastrophic events rose by 8-fold between the 1960s and 1990s and insured losses by 17-fold. Large catastrophic events cause less damage in an average year than the aggregated impacts of relatively small events (a 40/60 ratio globally) (7).

In the United States, averaged over the past 55 years, weather-related events have been responsible for 93% of all catastrophe events, 83% of the economic damages of natural disasters, and 87% of the insured losses. ... The observed upward trend in losses is consistent with what would be expected under climate change and with demographic factors (7).

Vulnerabilities - Overview

The insurability of natural disasters and extreme weather events may be affected by increases in the frequency, severity, or unpredictability of these events. ... Climate change presents various challenges to insurability. These include technical and market-based risks (7):

Technical Risks

• Shortening times between loss events, such as more hurricanes per season,
• Changing absolute and relative variability of losses,
• Changing structure of types of events,
• Shifting spatial distribution of events,
• Damages that increase exponentially or nonlinearly with weather intensity,
• Widespread geographical simultaneity of losses (e.g. from tidal surges arising from a broad die-off of protective coral reefs or disease outbreaks on multiple continents),
• Increased difficulty in anticipating "hot spots" (geographic and demographic) for particular hazards,
• More single events with multiple, correlated consequences. This was well evidenced in the pan-European heat catastrophe of 2003. Immediate or delayed impacts included extensive human morbidity and mortality, wildfire, massive crop losses, and the curtailment of electric power plants due to the temperature or lack of cooling water, and
• More hybrid events with multiple consequences (e.g. El Nino-related rain, ice storms, floods, mudslides, droughts, and wildfires).

Market-based Risks

• Historically-based premiums that lag behind actual losses,
• Failing to foresee and keep up with changing customer needs arising from the consequences of climate change,
• Unanticipated changes in patterns of claims, and associated difficulty in adjusting pricing and reserve practices to maintain profitability,
• Responses of insurance regulators,
• Reputation risks falling on insurers who do not, in the eyes of consumers, do enough to prevent losses arising from climate change, and
• Stresses unrelated to weather but conspiring with climate change impacts to amplify the net adverse impact. These include draw-downs of capital and surplus due to earthquakes or terrorist attacks and increased competition from self-insurance or other competing methods of risk-spreading.

Pressure on insurance affordability & availability under climate change

Extreme weather events have already precipitated contraction of insurance coverage in some markets, and the process can be expected to continue if the losses from such events increase in the future. Impacts vary, of course, depending on the specific circumstances, and can be relatively minor (gradual price increases) to more significant. For the United States, the following outlook has been presented for different types of issues (7):

• Flood - currently a mix of public/private insurance and risk sharing. Under climate change, insurability problems may extend from the present personal and small commercial lines into larger commercial lines.
• Windstorm—a largely insured risk at present. There are already considerable insurability problems and associated changes in terms and pricing, non-renewals, market withdrawl, etc. This could increase dramatically under climate change, resulting in shifting of losses to governments and consumers.
• Agriculture and livestock—currently a public/private insurance partnership. Climate change will stress this sector considerably, with potential for impacts due to drought, flood, pests, or other events on a scale with the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
• Wildfire—currently largely privately insured. More retention of risk by purchasers of insurance and more involvement by state governments is anticipated, while insurers raise deductibles and reduce limits of liability and scope of coverage.
• Mold and moisture damage—largely commercially insured until the crisis emerged a few years ago. Now, many states have exclusions.
• Earth movement and coastal erosion—primarily insured by government, if at all. With permafrost melt, subsidence of dry soils, sinkholes will become more prevalent, as will mudslides and property losses from coastal erosion. Government programs covering storm-surge-driven losses on eroded property could be overwhelmed with losses under climate change, with the result of more retention by property owners.
• Health impacts—currently largely privately insured. An insurability crisis under climate change is not anticipated. Impacts will manifest in the form of elevated health insurance prices.

Vulnerabilities - Europe

It is estimated that losses from weather events are doubling globally every 12 years. Even though the observed increase in losses is dominated by socio-economic factors (such as population growth, increased number of habitations in vulnerable areas, increased wealth, increased amount and value of vulnerable infrastructure), there is evidence that changing patterns of natural disasters are also drivers (1). It is however not known how much of this increase in losses can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change (2). After accounting for changes in population and wealth, it has been shown that changes in extreme weather events may be responsible for a growth in losses by about 2% a year since the 1970s (6).

In Europe, 64% of all loss events since 1980 are directly attributable to weather and climate events (storms, floods and heat-waves) and 25% to wild fires, cold spells, landslides and avalanches, which are also linked to weather and climate. 95% of the overall losses and 78% of all deaths caused by disastrous events result from such weather and climate-related events. The annual average number of these weather- and climate-related events in Europe increased during the period 1998–2007 by about 65% compared with the 1980s (3).

Swiss Re has estimated that in Europe the costs of a 100-year storm event could double by the 2080s with climate change (to EUR 40 billion compared with EUR 20 billion today), while average storm losses are estimated to increase by 16–68% over the same period (3). Analyses of long-term records of flood losses indicate that societal and economic factors have played an important role in the observed upward trends (4).

According to an estimate by the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA), 50% of insured losses in the world within the last 40 years have been the consequence of natural catastrophes in the 1990s. Insurance experts have warned that large regions of the world may be recategorised as ineligible for insurance, because changes in weather caused by climate change (such as heat waves and hurricanes) continue at an accelerating pace (4).

Climate change is expected to lead to an increase in compensable damage, which will contribute to increased insurance premiums. This means that extreme events will result in an increased level of risk in the insurance sector. Climate change may lead to increased costs and maybe even the bankruptcy of insurance companies (5).

Adaptation strategies Moldova

The following suggestions have been made concerning the risk transfer mechanism (8):

Regarding property insurance

• any reform has to start with better risk zoning, risk mapping and making this information as easily available to the public as possible;
• the conditions of public ex-post compensation of damages need to be redesigned so that they also encourage ex-ante insurance;
• given the size of Moldova and the transaction cost of the implementation of a new system, joining SECE CRIF might be worth considering.

Regarding the agricultural risk transfer mechanism

• the accessibility of the system to small farmers needs to be improved;
• given the considerable budgetary strain caused by the increasing sums being spent on subsidising insurance premiums, premium-reducing instruments should be considered;
• e.g. Index-based insurance should be promoted.

References

The references below are cited in full in a separate map 'References'. Please click here if you are looking for the full references for Moldova.

1. UNEP FI (2006), in: EEA, JRC and WHO (2008)
2. Höppe et al.(2006), in: EEA, JRC and WHO (2008)
3. EEA, JRC and WHO (2008)
4. Pielke Jr and Downton (2000); Mills (2005); Barredo (2007), in: EEA, JRC and WHO (2008)
5. Marttila et al. (2005)
6. Muir-Wood et al. (2006), in: Ward et al. (2008)
7. Mills et al. (2005)
8. UNDP (2009)
9. Worldbank (2007), in: UNDP (2009)