Consistent with Governor Larry Hogan’s commitment to address and mitigate the effects of climate change, the state of Maryland has joined the Sustainable Insurance Forum (SIF) of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The UNDP SIF is a global network of insurance regulators and financial supervisors working together to address sustainability challenges in the insurance sector. Maryland Insurance Commissioner Kathleen A. Birrane will serve as the principle contact for the Maryland Insurance Administration (MIA), the state’s representative to the SIF.
The SIF was established by the UNDP in December 2016 to provide an international platform for insurance supervisors to collaborate on regulatory responses to climate related financial risks and opportunities faced by the insurance sector. Maryland is the fifth U.S. state to join the SIF, following New York, California, Washington and Vermont. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) were also recently accepted as members.
“Insurance is a $5 trillion industry,” said Birrane in an MIA press release. “And, as with every other dimension of climate change, Maryland is playing a leading role in assuring that the insurance sector is engaged on climate issues and that insurance regulatory frameworks are appropriately adjusted to identify and account for climate-related financial risks.”
Representing Maryland at the NAIC, Birrane is a vice-chair of the Climate and Resiliency Task Force formed by the NAIC in 2020 and, in that capacity, chairs the Solvency Workstream, which is charged with considering how the financial surveillance tools used by U.S. regulators should be adjusted to account for the financial risks arising from climate change.
Internationally, Birrane is one of three U.S. members on the Steering Committee of the E.U.-U.S. Insurance Dialogue Project — an initiative started in 2012 to enhance cross-border cooperation and regulatory modernization to address current and emerging risks in the insurance sector. The project’s Climate Risk and Resilience Workstreams are focused on identifying sustainability, resilience and mitigation issues related to the insurance sector, including through technology and modeling.
In Maryland, Governor Hogan has both enacted and supported numerous bipartisan laws codifying Maryland’s commitment to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions, to ban hydraulic fracturing, to accelerate clean energy innovations and investments in green infrastructure, and to build resilience to the impacts of climate change on the Chesapeake Bay.
MIA regulates the nearly 1,600 licensed insurers that are authorized to do business in the state and that generate approximately $41 billion annually in direct written premium through transactions in the state.
Source: The Maryland Insurance Administration
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