Insurers are moving beyond their traditional role of paying claims after disasters, instead using artificial intelligence, climate analytics and transition finance to help customers prevent losses before they occur, speakers said during a panel discussion at InsureTech Connect (ITC) Asia on Thursday.
As climate change drives more frequent and severe natural catastrophes, panellists argued that insurers are evolving from risk transfer providers into long-term resilience partners, with Andrea Sieber, Regional Sustainability Head for Asia Pacific at Allianz Singapore, describing the shift as a “prevention-first approach” across the value chain.
“We should not only be there for customers or partners when there is a loss happening, but we should already prevent the loss from happening,” Sieber said.
Prevention is becoming more important as insurers seek to keep coverage both available and affordable across Asia, where recent natural catastrophes have affected countries including Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.
Sieber said insurers should integrate climate resilience across their entire value chain rather than limiting their role to underwriting and claims. Allianz has developed internal climate-risk tools that assess physical risks such as flooding across different climate scenarios and time horizons, and has expanded those capabilities to corporate clients.
The tools allow companies to understand how climate risks may evolve and identify resilience measures before losses occur.
“We give the tool to the clients and help them understand the financial impacts,” she said, adding that Allianz uses it to show clients why they should act earlier on flood resilience.
Despite these advances, Sieber said better data remains essential. While Europe has relatively mature location-based property data, she said many parts of Asia still lack the granular asset information needed to model climate risks accurately, although AI is expected to improve that over time.
Underwriting “forward, not backwards”
For agricultural insurer Kshema General Insurance, climate change is already reshaping underwriting practices.
Head of Engineering Sunil Mandava said historical weather patterns are becoming less reliable, forcing insurers to adopt predictive approaches using satellite imagery, vegetation indices and weather intelligence.
“We have to underwrite forward, not backwards,” Mandava said. “We cannot depend on yesterday’s weather to predict future losses.”
Kshema continuously monitors insured farms using satellite imagery throughout the growing season, while AI helps gather field-level information and accelerate claims payments after weather events.
The insurer also provides farmers with advance weather alerts and advice to help reduce losses before they occur.
“As an insurer, we should not be the last sort of players. We should be the architects of resiliency,” Mandava said.
Investors should support transition—not simply divest
Beyond underwriting, panellists said insurers also have an important role as long-term investors helping finance the low-carbon transition.
Shinichi Kishi said investors should continue supporting carbon-intensive industries that are actively transitioning rather than simply excluding them from investment portfolios.
“The easy and quick way to reduce emissions is just to divest. Should we do that? Of course, no,” Kishi said.
He said achieving meaningful decarbonisation requires continued engagement with sectors such as power generation, steel and chemicals, even if financed emissions temporarily rise during the transition.
“If we really pursue our ultimate goal towards net zero, we need to accept such a short-term increase,” he said.
Kishi said Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company has already achieved its interim target of reducing financed emissions by more than 50%, but acknowledged that cutting the remaining emissions will be more difficult because they are concentrated in hard-to-abate industries.
Meanwhile, Sieber said Allianz has committed to increasing low-carbon or sustainable investments by an additional €20bn by 2030 and recently launched an Asia Pacific credit infrastructure fund to finance renewable energy and other transition-related projects across the region.
The Allianz Asia Pacific Infrastructure Credit Fund, managed by Allianz Global Investors (AllianzGI), secured $270 million in its first close and is targeting a final close in 2027. The fund is designed to provide senior and unitranche credit to infrastructure businesses, predominantly across South and Southeast Asia.
Sieber said blended finance vehicles could also help mobilise larger pools of private capital for resilience and adaptation projects by reducing complexity and making investments more accessible for emerging markets.
“The essential advantage of this platform is that it takes away the complexity, the setups and the individual hurdles that individual investors may have when they talk about blended finance,” Sieber said.
