The insurance policeman launched a climate stress test on Thursday to assess the sector’s ability to absorb shocks due to climate change, two years after a first exercise.
In 2021, the first test had considered that the exposure of banks and insurers was moderate, but that the sector was exposed to the risk of a sharp increase in claims in certain French departments, recalled in a press conference Nathalie Aufauvre, secretary general of the Prudential Control and Resolution Authority (ACPR), in charge of these stress tests.
For this edition, the results of which will be published in the spring of 2024, banks are not included, as they have already taken part in a similar test organized by the European Central Bank (ECB) in 2022. strengthen the consideration of climate risks in their strategy.
The ACPR will test two scenarios for 2050: one with a gradual climate transition and the second with a more abrupt transition, due to the delay before 2030.
The scenario of a failure of the transition has not been integrated because the horizon 2050, that does not change anything, even if it has important effects for 2100, the measures taken today having only little effect. impact on the climate over the next two decades, explained Laurent Clerc, Director of Research and Risk Analysis at the ACPR.
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The authority will also test the effects of a short-term scenario, with two years marked by drought and major heat waves, followed in early 2025 by exceptional rainfall leading to a dam failure, and localized extreme flooding, according to a presentation by the ACPR.
In the short term, we will assume that insurers do not have the capacity to change the structure of their balance sheets and will suffer the materialization of shocks due to climate change, explained Mr. Clerc.
The exercise is voluntary and will not result in additional capital requirements regardless of the results.