The French companies Axa and Scor are not on the podium of European insurers and reinsurers in the fight against global warming, according to the ranking of the NGO collective “Insure our future” published Thursday.
Insure our future has distributed good and bad points to insurers and reassurers every year for seven years, assigning a score to their policy governing fossil fuels. For example, insurers who decide to no longer insure new oil or gas fields are better ranked.
As for insurers, Axa is ranked behind the German Allianz, the Italian Generali and the British Aviva.
Among insurers, Scor is ahead of the Italian insurer Swiss Re, the German Hannover Re and the Belgian Axis Capital.
Even if Europeans are doing better overall than their competitors in North America and Japan, the results remain severe for the industry as a whole.
To illustrate this, the NGO contributors to Insure our future, including Greenpeace and Eko, symbolically left the first three places, the most virtuous in environmental matters, empty.
If insurance companies took climate science seriously, they would fully align their underwriting and investment strategies with a credible 1.5 degree trajectory, linked to the Paris climate agreement, and end “All supports the increase in the production of fossil fuels,” said the international coordinator of Insure our Future Peter Bosshard, quoted in a press release.
Axa and Scor are sanctioned for their repeated support for the largest companies developing new oil and gas projects that they consider in transition, underlined in a separate press release by Ariel Le Bourdonnec, insurance campaign manager for the NGO Reclaim Finance, member of the consortium. .
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Axa regularly reviews and updates its investment and underwriting policies in order to align them with its ambitions in the fight against climate change, responded the insurer, requested by AFP, while supporting its customers and the economy in the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Among the 30 establishments studied, 24 have a coal policy and 22 an oil and gas policy, notes Reclaim Finance.
The Global Zero Carbon Insurers Alliance (NZIA) collapsed in the spring with the notable defections of three founding members: Scor, Axa and Allianz. The resigning members, however, insisted on the continuation of their commitments to the climate.