The Geneva Association and the International Insurance Society announced today that Alexander Braun, Sebastian Utz and Jiahua Xu, hailing from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, have won the Shin Research Excellence Award for their paper Are Insurance Balance Sheets Carbon-Neutral? Harnessing Asset Pricing for Climate-Change Policy.
The winning research illustrates the potential impact of the insurance industry to counter climate change by redirecting major capital flows associated with its investment and underwriting businesses towards carbon-neutral activities. The study outlines a two-pronged approach, designed to incentivize carbon-neutral activities, to examining and categorizing carbon exposures in investment portfolios in line with complementary regulatory reforms mandating disclosures.
