The Insurance Development Forum (IDF) has partnered up with Start Network – a coalition of more than 50 humanitarian charities – to support a new global finance service that prepares communities of weather-related calamities before it takes place.
The new tool called Start Ready will allocate pre-planned funding at scale for predictable crises such as droughts, flooding and heatwaves in the world’s most vulnerable communities.
Through this partnership, IDF member companies will be providing technical assistance to Start Network members who are working on the ground to get a head start before a crisis hits.
Denis Duverne, chairman of IDF and AXA Group, acknowledged the significant role insurance has amid the worsening climate crisis.
“As an industry, we have consistently recognised that climate change is the biggest challenge of our time,” Duverne said. “A fundamental pillar of addressing it will be greater access to climate risk information, tools and standards, as well as benchmark metrics that will shed light on the climate risks of today and on future impacts.”
Among the IDF’s contributions to Start Ready is developing tools that can analyse risk, which is an essential step to plan and finance ahead. Another is software to aid the humanitarian network with financial modelling and strategic management.
Led by the insurance sector, the IDF is a public-private partnership to build greater resilience against disasters in hopes of achieving the United Nations Global 2030 agenda. This initiative, coupled with local humanitarian action from Start Network, can protect more lives and livelihoods around the world.
“We are proud to work with Start Network, to drive a major step-change in the effort to open up access to climate risk understanding,” Durverne said. “This announcement is a testament to the power that collective action can have in the effort to build resilience to climate change.”
