How sure is insurance in the climate era?

In today’s Big Story Podcast, even before this summer of unprecedented weather, there were already a significant number of homes in Canada that are uninsurable for flood damage. And as the impact of the climate crisis creates more extreme and unpredictable weather, that number is likely to climb sharply. The insurance companies are in the risk-reward business, and if there’s too much risk, they’ll simply say, “Nope.”

Kathryn Bakos is the director of Climate Finance and Science at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo.

“Currently 10 per cent of the Canadian housing market is uninsurable for flood risk, my assumption is that will continue to grow as precipitation, major precipitation events, major flood events continue to increase in severity,” said Bakos.

So what makes a home uninsurable? How rapidly is the risk-reward equation changing? How can we adapt our homes and buildings to mitigate the worst impacts of extreme weather? And what does the future of property insurance look like in the years to come?

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