Photo: Climate change will make hurricanes like last year’s Ian a more regular occurrence
Climate change poses arguably the greatest challenge faced by humanity in the 21st century. Bermuda will put itself at the centre of the discussion of what to do about it during the second Bermuda Climate Risk Summit on June 26 and 27.
Last year’s inaugural event was held at Rosewood Tucker’s Point and drew about 150 attendees, including 70 from overseas, a sold-out event.
This year’s event will be held at a larger venue, the Hamilton Princess, and organiser the Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA), expects the event to be double the size of the debut summit.
Bermuda’s re/insurers are in the frontline of managing and modelling climate risk, while the island is also a world leader in alternative risk transfer, such as insurance-linked securities. The event promises discussion of wide-ranging climate issues, including the science of climate change, the regulatory needs of green investors, and Bermuda’s leadership role in this new era.
After three successive years of global catastrophe losses of $100 billion-plus and a still growing protection gap, there is sure to be growing interest from around the world in the solutions Bermuda market innovators may be able to find.
The BDA will hope to follow on from its successful Risk Summit in March, which received some rave reviews and which attracted 450 attendees, including 150 from overseas. The event’s short-term economic impact was estimated at $1.8 million.
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It’s been a rough period for digital assets. The collapse of Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX Group late last year has shaken investor confidence across the industry. And in March a banking crisis caused further mayhem in the crypto world, with the collapse of both the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank just two days apart. Both US banks serviced customers in the digital asset business.
New York-based Signature’s collapse was of particular concern on the island. In March 2019, the bank had declared its willingness to do business with Bermuda’s digital asset industry and David Burt, the Premier, had hailed it as a solution to the sector’s lack of banking services, as local banks had shied away from the new industry.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation acted quickly, taking over both SVB and Signature, marking the second and third largest bank failures in US history, and made depositors whole.
However, the banking dramas have done nothing to calm the nerves of digital asset investors still rocked by the FTX catastrophe. A recovery of confidence will take time — and a period free of stomach-churning upheavals.
