Relational urban geographies of re/insurance 151
leveraging ILS issuance drawn from Florida hurricane wind risk and beyond
can therefore also be understood as a project which seeks to secure Southeast
Asia’s economic trajectory against catastrophic disruptions – and Singapore’s
advantageous if fragile position therein.
Discussion: Mapping headwinds on the horizon
Florida and Singapore constitute, and in many ways are constituted
through, urban geographies of hurricane wind re/insurance exchange. The
Florida-Singapore ILS case illuminates how re/insurance markets emerge
and expand through disparate yet interwoven ecological, political, and economic dynamics within and between geographies. While Florida continues
to serve as an industry-defining source of insured wind risk to be marketised or otherwise managed through re/insurance, Singapore has emerged as
a key centre for brokering such risk for new investors, as part of a broader
strategy of financialised regional catastrophe risk management (see Grove
2012). Actors operating within and between each context cultivate re/
insurance in response to a plurality of ‘headwinds’ on the horizon, ranging
from anxieties about the insurability of growing property catastrophe risk
exposure and the search for a safe haven for collateral-seeking capital, to
the need to pre-emptively secure particular regional and sectoral relations
against destabilisation-by-disaster. While questions about the long-term
insurability of particular assets, places, or perils are among the existential
headwinds facing re/insurers, so too does this sector remain a powerful
force when it comes to defining and managing unruly climate uncertainties
through finance.
Continued relational analysis of re/insurance markets is vital to our
understanding of the broader geographies of climate governance. As a gesture towards this open-ended project, this concluding discussion proposes
three analytical focal points for such a relational approach, in dialogue with
the Florida-Singapore ILS case. First, the case reiterates how circulations
of tools and techniques work to secure or extend re/insurance geographies.
Insurance-linked securities and the catastrophe risk models used to marketise risks therein, play a constitutive role in the Florida-Singapore ILS case,
yet their origin, adoption, and adaptation by the industry remain rooted in
specific geographical sites and practices (Jarzabkowski et al. 2015; Taylor &
Weinkle 2020). Although catastrophe risk models are integral to contemporary actuarial practice, their initial take-up was closely linked with efforts to
address the particular challenges of predicting and pricing low probability,
high-value catastrophic loss events, and Florida hurricanes in particular.
Models must be continually adapted to enable their deployment across new
regions and perils, coevolving with industry investments in data-capture
and synthesis to tap (or induce) new market demand, advancements in scientific understandings of particular risks, and changing non-financial stakeholder perceptions of the value and usefulness of risk models. In Singapore,
leveraging ILS issuance drawn from Florida hurricane wind risk and beyond
can therefore also be understood as a project which seeks to secure Southeast
Asia’s economic trajectory against catastrophic disruptions – and Singapore’s
advantageous if fragile position therein.
Discussion: Mapping headwinds on the horizon
Florida and Singapore constitute, and in many ways are constituted
through, urban geographies of hurricane wind re/insurance exchange. The
Florida-Singapore ILS case illuminates how re/insurance markets emerge
and expand through disparate yet interwoven ecological, political, and economic dynamics within and between geographies. While Florida continues
to serve as an industry-defining source of insured wind risk to be marketised or otherwise managed through re/insurance, Singapore has emerged as
a key centre for brokering such risk for new investors, as part of a broader
strategy of financialised regional catastrophe risk management (see Grove
2012). Actors operating within and between each context cultivate re/
insurance in response to a plurality of ‘headwinds’ on the horizon, ranging
from anxieties about the insurability of growing property catastrophe risk
exposure and the search for a safe haven for collateral-seeking capital, to
the need to pre-emptively secure particular regional and sectoral relations
against destabilisation-by-disaster. While questions about the long-term
insurability of particular assets, places, or perils are among the existential
headwinds facing re/insurers, so too does this sector remain a powerful
force when it comes to defining and managing unruly climate uncertainties
through finance.
Continued relational analysis of re/insurance markets is vital to our
understanding of the broader geographies of climate governance. As a gesture towards this open-ended project, this concluding discussion proposes
three analytical focal points for such a relational approach, in dialogue with
the Florida-Singapore ILS case. First, the case reiterates how circulations
of tools and techniques work to secure or extend re/insurance geographies.
Insurance-linked securities and the catastrophe risk models used to marketise risks therein, play a constitutive role in the Florida-Singapore ILS case,
yet their origin, adoption, and adaptation by the industry remain rooted in
specific geographical sites and practices (Jarzabkowski et al. 2015; Taylor &
Weinkle 2020). Although catastrophe risk models are integral to contemporary actuarial practice, their initial take-up was closely linked with efforts to
address the particular challenges of predicting and pricing low probability,
high-value catastrophic loss events, and Florida hurricanes in particular.
Models must be continually adapted to enable their deployment across new
regions and perils, coevolving with industry investments in data-capture
and synthesis to tap (or induce) new market demand, advancements in scientific understandings of particular risks, and changing non-financial stakeholder perceptions of the value and usefulness of risk models. In Singapore,