保险：现代经济的润滑剂

When I first joined the insurance industry, I realized that telling people about it was the fastest way for them to lose interest. 我刚进入保险行业时，就意识到向人们谈论它，是让他们迅速失去兴趣的最快方式。

(Laughter) Fortunately, that's changed. （笑声）幸运的是，情况已经改变了。

Risk is so much higher on people's personal and professional agendas. 风险在人们的个人和职业议程中占据了更高的位置。

We know that it pays to manage risk. 我们知道管理风险是值得的。

And my industry, our ability to price risk means that we have tools and products that can give a signal as to how we might adapt to climate change. 而我所在的行业，我们为风险定价的能力意味着我们拥有工具和产品，可以为我们如何适应气候变化提供指引。

So when I joined this industry, I knew nothing about it. 所以当我加入这个行业时，我对它一无所知。

But in my first week, I learned its role in a modern economy. 但在我入职的第一周，我就了解了它在现代经济中的作用。

Aeroplanes wouldn't fly, surgeons wouldn't operate, and Taylor Swift would not go on tour without access to insurance. 没有保险，飞机无法飞行，外科医生无法手术，泰勒·斯威夫特也无法进行巡演。

In fact, very few people will take on a major financial commitment without it. 事实上，很少有人会在没有保险的情况下承担重大的财务承诺。

It works because the losses of the few are paid for by the many, making risks manageable. 它的运作原理是少数人的损失由多数人承担，从而使风险变得可控。

And so banks rely on insurance. 因此，银行依赖保险。

And if anyone here has built a wind farm or bought a home, the banks will have required you to have insurance in place. 如果这里有人建造过风力发电厂或购买过房屋，银行都会要求你购买保险。

In fact, many, maybe even most financial transactions are contingent on insurance being in place. 事实上，许多，甚至可能是大多数金融交易都取决于保险的存在。

And so insurance is the lubricant of the financial services industry. 所以，保险是金融服务业 (Financial Services Industry: 提供金融产品与服务的行业) 的润滑剂。

And without insurance, you'll struggle to access debt. 如果没有保险，你将难以获得贷款。

保险费与风险：清晰的信号

Last bit of the insurance lesson, I promise. 我保证，这是关于保险的最后一课了。

Premiums (Premiums: 购买保险所需支付的费用) price risk. 保险费为风险定价。

So the cost of the insurance gives an indication of how likely it is that the insurer thinks that you will suffer a loss. 因此，保险的费用表明了保险公司认为你遭受损失的可能性有多大。

And we all know this. 我们都明白这一点。

Young, inexperienced drivers pay high insurance premiums. 年轻、缺乏经验的司机需要支付高额保险费。

Yet on my home, if I install a burglar alarm or locks on my windows, I know the cost will be lower. 然而，在我的家中，如果我安装了防盗警报器或窗户锁，我知道费用会更低。

So the premium indicates how likely it is you will suffer a loss, but there are things that we can do to reduce the risk and reduce the cost. 所以，保险费表明了你遭受损失的可能性，但我们有办法可以降低风险和成本。

So what's any of this got to do with climate change? 那么，这一切与气候变化有什么关系呢？

Well, importantly, insurance only works while extreme weather remains a risk. 嗯，重要的是，保险只有在极端天气仍然是“风险”时才有效。

If it becomes a near certainty, insurance becomes unaffordable and potentially not available. 如果它几乎成为一种“确定性”，保险就会变得负担不起，甚至可能无法获得。

So we have an industry whose core competency is pricing risk, telling us that in places the cost of risk is too high for people to pay. 所以，我们有一个核心能力是为风险定价的行业，它告诉我们，在某些地方，风险成本高到人们无法承受。

And at the same time, we have a financial services industry that relies on insurance to provide loans, which in turn make the financial system work. 与此同时，我们还有一个依赖保险提供贷款的金融服务业，而贷款反过来又使金融系统得以运转。

气候变化下的“不可保性”危机

Now the signals are really clear. 现在，信号非常清晰。

We're told that in Australia, by 2100, 1.3 million homes will be uninsurable due to extreme weather. 我们被告知，到2100年，澳大利亚将有130万套房屋因极端天气而无法投保。

And in New South Wales, that's 90 percent of people's homes. 在新南威尔士州，这占到人们房屋总数的90%。

In New Zealand, it's 10,000 homes uninsurable by 2050. 在新西兰，到2050年将有1万套房屋无法投保。

And across the world, in Canada, the Bureau of Insurance says that nearly 10 percent of homes are already close to uninsurable and represent 90 percent of the industry's losses. 在全球范围内，加拿大的保险局表示，近10%的房屋已经接近无法投保，并且占到该行业损失的90%。

Why? 为什么？

Extreme weather due to climate change. 原因在于气候变化导致的极端天气。

Now, since the 1970s, the cost of extreme weather events has increased every decade. 自20世纪70年代以来，极端天气事件的成本每十年都在增加。

Last year, the costs were 320 billion dollars. 去年，这些成本达到了3200亿美元。

And the LA wildfires on their own, 150 billion dollars. 仅洛杉矶的山火一项，就造成了1500亿美元的损失。

But it's not just severe losses. 但这不仅仅是严重的损失。

Sticking in the US, last year, there were 27 incidents with costs of over one billion dollars. 在美国，去年发生了27起损失超过10亿美元的事件。

That's more than two a month. 这相当于每月超过两起。

So the equation has flipped. 所以，情况已经颠倒了。

It's no longer just the losses of the few. 不再仅仅是少数人的损失。

It's now the losses of the many. 现在是多数人的损失。

And as a result, we're hearing stories of people struggling to access insurance. 结果是，我们听到了人们难以获得保险的故事。

无保险的连锁反应

And if you can't get insurance for your home, your house is worth less, and you'll struggle to sell. 如果你无法为你的房屋获得保险，你的房子就会贬值，并且你将难以出售。

Data in the UK shows that homeowners with no access to flood insurance typically lose 10 to 30 percent of the home's value. 英国的数据显示，无法获得洪水保险的房主通常会损失房屋价值的10%到30%。

In Florida, that's 20 to 40 percent. 在佛罗里达州，这一比例是20%到40%。

And 30 percent of mortgage foreclosures in the US are expected to be due to extreme weather, due to climate change, by 2035. 预计到2035年，美国30%的抵押贷款止赎将归因于气候变化导致的极端天气。

So there's an indication of people are saying that insurance has failed, but it has not. 所以有人说保险已经失败了，但这并非事实。

It's just telling us that the costs are too high to bear. 它只是在告诉我们，这些成本高到无法承受。

Simply put, without access to insurance, people will struggle to secure debt, they will struggle to sell their homes, they will struggle to invest in their businesses. 简而言之，没有保险，人们将难以获得债务，难以出售房屋，难以投资他们的企业。

And we're seeing this happen due to climate change. 我们正在目睹这一切因气候变化而发生。

I'm afraid there's another challenge. 恐怕还有另一个挑战。

Loans and mortgages are normally taken out for long periods. 贷款和抵押贷款通常期限较长。

It may be 20 years or more. 可能长达20年或更久。

And so you may build your wind farm or buy your home, assuming that you can use insurance to manage your risk. 因此，你可能建造风力发电厂或购买房屋，并假设你可以使用保险来管理风险。

Yet over time, the frequency and severity of extreme weather events means that insurance becomes unaffordable. 然而，随着时间的推移，极端天气事件的频率和严重性意味着保险变得无法负担。

And so you've lost a key tool in your financial resilience toolkit, and you're more likely to default on your loan. 因此，你失去了财务韧性工具包中的一个关键工具，并且更有可能拖欠贷款。

And so we're also in a situation where the finance industry are seeing asset devaluations, they're seeing increased chances of default, and so we could have liquidity crunches in some areas where investors choose to exit the areas with the most risk. 因此，我们还面临这样一种情况：金融行业正在经历资产贬值 (Asset Devaluations: 资产价值下降)，他们看到违约的可能性增加，因此在一些投资者选择退出风险最高地区的地方，可能会出现流动性紧缩 (Liquidity Crunches: 市场缺乏流动资金的状况)。

行动刻不容缓：投资韧性

So it's clear we need to act. 所以很明显，我们需要采取行动。

And the scientists have been telling us this for a really long time. 科学家们很久以前就一直在告诉我们这一点。

It's just the finance industry is saying it now, too. 只不过现在金融行业也开始发声了。

Beyond cutting emissions, which we need to do, there are things that we can do. 除了我们必须做的减排之外，还有一些我们可以做的事情。

One of the fantastic things about having a price for risk is it incentivizes you to invest in resilience. 为风险定价的一个绝妙之处在于，它激励你投资于韧性 (Resilience: 应对变化、冲击并从中恢复的能力)。

And we know that investments in preventative measures have a payback of 10 to 13 dollars for every dollar spent. 我们知道，对预防措施 (Preventative Measures: 旨在避免或减少损失的行动) 的投资，每花费一美元就能获得10到13美元的回报。

So as an industry, we need to do far more to tell people that prevention saves money. 因此，作为一个行业，我们需要做更多的工作来告诉人们，预防可以省钱。

Now, the cheapest time to invest in resilience is when you build new things. 现在，投资韧性最划算的时机是在建造新事物时。

We should only build resilient new structures. 我们应该只建造具有韧性的新结构。

But 80 to 85 [percent] of the buildings that exist everywhere in the world today will still be here in 2040. 但是，今天世界上各地80%到85%的现有建筑到2040年仍将存在。

So that means we also need to retrofit (Retrofit: 对现有建筑或系统进行改造和升级，以提高其性能或适应新需求). 这意味着我们还需要进行改造。

Some of those actions may be things like lifting electrical equipment off the ground floor of buildings to reduce damage from flood, or you may need to replace the shingles on your home with a living roof to make you more resilient to wildfire. 其中一些行动可能包括将建筑物一层的电气设备抬高，以减少洪水造成的损害；或者你可能需要将家中的瓦片替换为绿色屋顶，以提高对野火的韧性。

But these cost money and some of the interventions cost a lot of money. 但这些都需要资金，其中一些干预措施成本很高。

Now there are grants (Grants: 政府或组织提供的无需偿还的资金) and there are resilience funds (Resilience Funds: 专门用于增强社区或系统抵御风险能力的基金) that can help with this, but their scale is woefully inadequate. 现在有一些补助金和韧性基金可以提供帮助，但它们的规模远远不足。

So as an insurance industry, we need to do more to promote preventative measures so that we're reducing the risk now and saving for the future. 因此，作为一个保险行业，我们需要做更多的工作来推广预防措施，以便我们现在就能降低风险，并为未来储蓄。

保险的新角色：支持气候适应

Now there are lots of roles for insurance to support climate change. 现在，保险在支持气候变化方面有很多作用。

One other that I want to mention is I've been talking about the impact of insurance on property damage, but there's a type of insurance called parametric insurance (Parametric Insurance: 一种基于预设触发事件而非实际损失进行赔付的保险) that supports people in stresses like extreme heat or water stress. 我想提到的另一点是，我一直在谈论保险对财产损害的影响，但有一种称为参数保险的类型，它在极端高温或水资源紧张等压力下为人们提供支持。

And right here in Kenya, we have a program supporting small-scale farmers. 就在肯尼亚，我们有一个支持小农户的项目。

So in the event that the rains don't come and the crops fail, or in India, where extreme heat means it's unsafe to work in the market, the micro insurance (Micro Insurance: 针对低收入人群设计的小额保险产品) can replace people's livelihoods. 因此，如果降雨不足导致农作物歉收，或者在印度，极端高温意味着在市场工作不安全时，小额保险可以替代人们的生计。

And these insurances are impacting hundreds of thousands of people's lives globally for the better. 这些保险正在全球范围内积极影响着数十万人的生活。

But these insurances too, will become unavailable and unaffordable if the risk becomes a certainty. 但是，如果风险成为一种确定性，这些保险也将变得不可用且无法负担。

So insurance is doing exactly what it's supposed to, it's pricing risk, and it's giving us a warning sign that assets may be worth less and credit could be less available as banks either refuse or charge more for credit because insurance isn't there. 所以保险正在做它应该做的事情，它正在为风险定价，并给我们一个警告信号：资产可能会贬值，信贷可能会减少，因为银行在没有保险的情况下会拒绝提供贷款或收取更高的费用。

Which means one of the key tools in our toolkit may not be available when we need it most. 这意味着我们工具包中的一个关键工具，可能在我们最需要它的时候却无法使用。

保险：解决方案的一部分

So what is my vision for insurance? 那么，我对保险的愿景是什么？

I don't want it to be seen as a problem. 我不希望它被视为一个问题。

I want it to be part of the solution. 我希望它成为解决方案的一部分。

Insurance is a sophisticated financial tool that provides us all with an incentive to act as a society. 保险是一个复杂的金融工具，它激励我们整个社会采取行动。

And that's what we need to do. 这正是我们需要做的。

We need to invest in adaptation (Adaptation: 采取措施以应对气候变化带来的实际或预期影响) and resilience so the risk remains manageable, enabling people and businesses to continue to invest in their future. 我们需要投资于适应和韧性，以使风险保持可控，从而使个人和企业能够继续投资于他们的未来。

Thank you. 谢谢大家。

(Applause) （掌声）