At RIMS, this underwriting boss will push insurers to support solar | Insurance business America
“It’s cheaper to build a solar system”
Risk management news
By Daniel Wood
The global risk community, including risk managers, insurers and brokers, will gather next month in San Diego for the Risk Management Society (RIMS) annual conference.
According to its website, the four-day event will draw 10,000 attendees and feature more than 300 speakers, including Chubb Group CEO Evan G. Greenberg and executives from Marsh, Aon and WTW.
One topic of conversation is how to accelerate the transition from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy.
Get to know “the only MGA for renewable energy”.
Isaac McLean (pictured above) is Chief Underwriting Officer at kWh Analytics. He described his US-based company as “the only renewable energy MGA writing real estate capacity today.”
Solar: cheaper to run than gas
Insurance Business asked if the context behind his RIMS talk was a major recent change in the energy industry: Don’t fossil fuels produce more energy more efficiently than renewables?
“Absolutely,” he said. “Last year we reached the tipping point where it is cheaper to build a solar system and generate electricity than to just continue to operate a gas system.”
McLean said solar prices have fallen dramatically, production has increased “and the technology is excellent.”
For example, he said that today’s combination of solar and battery storage can now provide the more consistent power output that a power grid needs.
“It really is the future of energy,” McLean said.
Renewable energy players are starting to get it
He also said key stakeholders in the clean energy sector are focusing more on resilience.
“Just this week we were at a project financing conference where a number of bankers were talking to solar asset owners about future development investments,” McLean said. “Of course the banks are interested because they make money on these projects because prices have fallen, but they are also very interested in resilience because losses interrupt that flow.”
He said this is a unique situation because solar owners are “so motivated to make sure their customers are up and running,” making them very open to having a conversation about resiliency with their broker.
Are the brokers already fully involved?
However, some brokers are not yet entirely on board with this renewed focus on resilience.
“We were talking about a loss scenario and the broker spoke up and said, ‘That’s a BI.’ [business interruption] “Just loss, but it’s covered by insurance,” McLean said. “The asset owner insulted him and said, ‘That’s not the point!’
McLean said this plant owner said he wanted this clean power project to get up and running. One reason, he said, is that the company does well when it beats production estimates. The other reason: the asset owner gets his bonus!
“He doesn’t want a covered loss,” McLean said. “So they’re really engaged and interested in that resilience.”
Roundtable Asset Holders
Another initiative with positive results, McLean said, is roundtable discussions with asset owners.
Other system owners, he said, found that cleaning their inverters in the spring was really beneficial because it reduced the risk of blockages in the inverters’ filters.
Another risk factor discussed at the round table was the pollen season.
“You will see dirt on the panels and we want to make sure we wash them after pollen season and not right before when there is dust on them anyway,” McLean said.
The origins of kWh
IB suggested that kWh sounds like a company of data experts turned insurance company and asked if that was unusual in the solar energy insurance space?
“This is it,” McLean said. “We have started building a loss database and with this loss database we have a significant portion of the market. This feeds into our nat-cat and attrition loss modeling so we have a more accurate view.”
It would then be possible to segment these losses according to their causes and identify resilience characteristics that would improve the risk characteristics.
“Because we’re heavily into the data, we can segment what attributes are causing those losses, what are the resiliency features, whether it’s hardware selection or how you operate that facility, and that allows us to be more competitive or.” offer these parties more limits.”
It also allows them to recommend changes to improve resilience, he said. At this point, he said, they would primarily be writing insurance quotes for customers in the United States, but also in Canada.
McLean spoke to IB using his laptop’s battery and his cell phone’s hotspot. He was also left in the dark because an ongoing snowstorm knocked out power and dropped 10 inches of snow around his home in Denver, Colorado.
Are you a clean energy insurance broker? How do you assess the commitment of insurers in this area? Please tell us below.
similar posts
Stay up to date with the latest news and events
Join our mailing list, it’s free!
Source link
2024-04-04 18:59:12
www.insurancebusinessmag.com
