Extreme heat could make areas uninsurable says Spanish insurer
The CEO of Spain’s largest insurer has suggested that climate change and the rise in temperatures could leave some areas uninsurable.
The comments came from Gonzalo Gortazar, chief executive of CaixaBank. Speaking to Bloomberg TV, he said that the rise in extreme weather “has the potential of changing the insurance business profoundly and making part of the world uninsurable”.
“It’s not happening yet,” he said. “But if we keep moving in that direction, this is something we will have to face it in due course.”
Spain has seen some of the highest temperatures this summer amid a record-breaking heatwave across Europe.
Catalonia, where the insurer has its headquarters, saw a record rise in temperature in July, a month that is set to go down as the hottest on record in Spain.
The comments also come after an academic criticised the various climate scenario models used by insurers as “benign” and “implausible”.
According to a report from the UK’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, the current use of climate models is like modelling the scenario of the Titanic hitting an iceberg but excluding the possibility that the ship could sink.
