144 ZJ Taylor
asset managers to govern their physical climate risk exposure (Taylor and
Aalbers 2022). Re/insurers curate and perform epistemologies of risk, build
institutional capacities and tools to manage such risk, and profit from a
wide array of risk finance and advisory services (Taylor & Weinkle 2020).
They play multifaceted roles in the assembly and expansion of regimes of
financialised disaster risk governance (Grove 2012), and by extension mediate the moral economies of climate change in powerful ways (Elliott 2021).
Despite this global(-ising) influence, re/insurance markets are geographically uneven, contingent, and provisional (Johnson 2013, 2014; Taylor &
Weinkle 2020; Booth 2021). The market’s contemporary capital flows and
expertise largely remain confined to regions with risks that are sufficiently
profitable to lure capital, actuarially well-defined enough to be priced with
confidence, and where other conditions (like favourable state regulation)
enable and ensure market access. As re/insurers seek to construct new risk
capital markets across emergent geographical frontiers, they must also
contend with recurrent frictions and dislocations within existing market
territories, ranging from debates over insurance affordability, to postdisaster crises of insolvency and market abandonment. Growing anxieties
about the ‘uninsurability’ of a number of well-established underwriting
domains – ranging from fossil fuel infrastructure to US coastal real estate –
are contemporary examples of the existential headwinds facing the sector.
How do we reconcile the globalising yet provincial, universalising but
contingent character of these markets at this crucial juncture, as state
and capital alike seek to manage a world of unruly climate risk using re/
insurance models, methods, and capital instruments? This chapter responds
to these tensions by examining how re/insurance markets evolve through
the relational interplays within and between key urban geographies in the
hurricane wind risk trade. Contemporary efforts to construct an insurancelinked securities (ILS) and catastrophe finance hub in Singapore provide
the touchstone for this essay. By transforming insured risks into an investment asset class, ILS instruments are widely seen to be key to securing the
capacity of re/insurance markets to finance new and expanding horizons of
catastrophe risk (Johnson 2013, 2014; Taylor 2020) 2 . Singapore’s first fullfledged, SEC Rule 144A-compliant ILS was issued on behalf of a Florida
insurer, backing the hurricane wind risk exposure within thousands of residential property insurance policies. Florida relies on ILS and other forms
of re/insurance capital to finance its hurricane-exposed, real estate-driven
political economy. Well-established Florida re/insurance risk capital flows
have provided an ideal test case to demonstrate Singapore’s competence as
an ILS hub, as part of a larger play to capture a growing share of the Asian
re/insurance business, and in turn to secure the city-state’s advantageous, if
precarious position as an international financial centre.
The chapter develops the Florida-Singapore ILS case to make two contributions to a growing body of critical insurance studies (Booth 2021). First,
the case deepens our understanding the relational ways in which specific urban
asset managers to govern their physical climate risk exposure (Taylor and
Aalbers 2022). Re/insurers curate and perform epistemologies of risk, build
institutional capacities and tools to manage such risk, and profit from a
wide array of risk finance and advisory services (Taylor & Weinkle 2020).
They play multifaceted roles in the assembly and expansion of regimes of
financialised disaster risk governance (Grove 2012), and by extension mediate the moral economies of climate change in powerful ways (Elliott 2021).
Despite this global(-ising) influence, re/insurance markets are geographically uneven, contingent, and provisional (Johnson 2013, 2014; Taylor &
Weinkle 2020; Booth 2021). The market’s contemporary capital flows and
expertise largely remain confined to regions with risks that are sufficiently
profitable to lure capital, actuarially well-defined enough to be priced with
confidence, and where other conditions (like favourable state regulation)
enable and ensure market access. As re/insurers seek to construct new risk
capital markets across emergent geographical frontiers, they must also
contend with recurrent frictions and dislocations within existing market
territories, ranging from debates over insurance affordability, to postdisaster crises of insolvency and market abandonment. Growing anxieties
about the ‘uninsurability’ of a number of well-established underwriting
domains – ranging from fossil fuel infrastructure to US coastal real estate –
are contemporary examples of the existential headwinds facing the sector.
How do we reconcile the globalising yet provincial, universalising but
contingent character of these markets at this crucial juncture, as state
and capital alike seek to manage a world of unruly climate risk using re/
insurance models, methods, and capital instruments? This chapter responds
to these tensions by examining how re/insurance markets evolve through
the relational interplays within and between key urban geographies in the
hurricane wind risk trade. Contemporary efforts to construct an insurancelinked securities (ILS) and catastrophe finance hub in Singapore provide
the touchstone for this essay. By transforming insured risks into an investment asset class, ILS instruments are widely seen to be key to securing the
capacity of re/insurance markets to finance new and expanding horizons of
catastrophe risk (Johnson 2013, 2014; Taylor 2020) 2 . Singapore’s first fullfledged, SEC Rule 144A-compliant ILS was issued on behalf of a Florida
insurer, backing the hurricane wind risk exposure within thousands of residential property insurance policies. Florida relies on ILS and other forms
of re/insurance capital to finance its hurricane-exposed, real estate-driven
political economy. Well-established Florida re/insurance risk capital flows
have provided an ideal test case to demonstrate Singapore’s competence as
an ILS hub, as part of a larger play to capture a growing share of the Asian
re/insurance business, and in turn to secure the city-state’s advantageous, if
precarious position as an international financial centre.
The chapter develops the Florida-Singapore ILS case to make two contributions to a growing body of critical insurance studies (Booth 2021). First,
the case deepens our understanding the relational ways in which specific urban