Cristina Contreras, speaker at World Bank Group. IFC’s Advisory Panel on Business and Sustainability Roundtable “Insurance and Resilience”. April 26, 2016

What are the gaps that must be addressed to increase mobilization resources around resilience? How to accelerate delivery of innovative products for the private sector companies in emerging markets? or what are the new metrics needed to document the resilience of investments? are some of the questions that arise when we look at infrastructure resilience and the risk associated with these projects. Nevertheless, how best to leverage the insurance sector to build resilient private sector investments in emerging markets, still remains unsolved. In order to answer some of these questions, experts from insurance companies, financial and academic institutions, non profit organizations and government representatives from the White House Council on Environmental Quality got together at the IFC’s Advisory Panel on Business and Sustainability Round Table “Insurance and Resilience” that took place on Tuesday April 26th in Washington DC.

The objectives of this round table were: In the short term to explore main questions, sharing insights on innovative initiatives and products that respond to resilience issues and provide recommendations on how these might be scaled up, as well as identifying potential gaps. In the longer term to help IFC and the insurance sector develop products and partnerships, align on-going initiatives, and define ways to better utilize the insurance sector capabilities to help create resilient investments.

The work conducted at the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure, presented by Cristina Contreras can inform about best practices that companies can apply in projects, and key indicators that insurance companies can use to “screen” poorly prepared projects to better face climate change and therefore reduce the risk assumed by them.