Businesses have been told resilience is a journey not a destination and one leading insurer has  launched a new operation to better tackle climate threats.

Allianz has created its Climate Adaptation & Resilience Services (CAReS). The data-driven platform has been developed together with Allianz clients and allows them to directly identify potential high-risk areas and how climate risks from 12 perils will affect their locations from present day up to the year 2080.

The underwriter said climate change is having a severe impact on economies around the world, all businesses are affected. In 2024, the overall losses from climate-related natural catastrophes such as flood, windstorm, or hail summed up to $327 billion, while insured losses reached $138 billion.

“The question is not if a company is affected by climate risks in the future, but when it will happen,” explained Michele Williams, Global Head of Allianz Risk Consulting (ARC) at Allianz Commercial. “No industry is immune to risks such as floods, droughts, storms, or fires. We all remember the severe consequences from events such as the LA wildfires or Hurricanes in the US. Businesses are interrupted, and economic and insured losses are exploding into hundreds of billions of US-Dollars per year. Therefore, it is so important to understand climate risks and your exposure to them. This is why we developed CAReS, so our clients have the option to address and mitigate their risks as well as to avoid surging insurance costs in the future.”

Allianz said CAReS translates physical climate risks into financial and physical loss metrics at portfolio and location level and helps businesses to manage these risks with resilience consultancy. The data-driven platform allows companies to perform climate risk assessments to identify and prioritize high climate risk exposures for their key assets including own locations, new investments and supplier locations.

“In a five-step process, they can understand their climate risks and their impact on their assets,” it continued. “Furthermore, businesses can identify and prioritise highly exposed locations in a dashboard solution with different risk scores for 12 perils, including tropical storms, floods, hail, wildfire or extreme heat. Four different timelines are available: present day, 2030, 2050, and 2080. This allows businesses to directly address potential risks as well as financial impacts in the future and mitigate them, working closely with ARC experts.

Michael Bruch, head of Global ARC Advisory Services at Allianz Commercial said: “Resilience is a journey, not a destination. By proactively managing climate risks you can mitigate potential disruptions to your business and stay one step ahead. This is a win-win situation for Allianz Commercial as an insurer as well as for the client who can reduce its climate risks and potential losses in the future.”