Relational urban geographies of re/insurance 153
of the construction of local re/insurance markets, which underpin distinctive urban political-economic projects. Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance
Corporation has been among the most prolific catastrophe bond issuers in
recent years (Table 11.1). Public insurers in Louisiana and Texas are also
among early issuers in Singapore (Table 11.2). Beyond issuing ILS, Florida
state agencies invest in the market, and shape private insurer demand for reinsurance through regulations, subsidies, and guarantees, as part of a broader
play to secure its housing- and property development-driven political economy (Taylor 2020). Similarly, the Singapore government maintains a grant
scheme for ILS market entrants, which offsets the costs of preparing a new
issuance. The case also highlights indirect forms of state-firm collaboration
and intervention, like public-private partnerships which sponsor risk-related
scientific research in Singapore, or state-sanctioned real estate growth strategies which reproduce a structural market for re/insurance in Florida. While
states actively seek to extend re/insurance markets to further particular policy
outcomes, it is important to recognise that inherited public policies, enduring
path dependencies, and evolving state capacities can also normalise or otherwise enable specific re/insurance market patterns and logics. How, then, do
these patterns of statecraft shape how, where, and when urban geographies
come to be entangled with re/insurance? And how might they be repurposed
to confront emerging dilemmas raised by climate disruptions?
These three focal points – circulations of tools and techniques, risk capital
flows, and shifting state engagement – seek to populate a critical imagination for how we might continue to trace the evolving project of re/insurance
within and between urban geographies, in the face of complex headwinds
on the horizon. Insofar as these risk underwriting institutions increasingly
govern diverse configurations of ecological, economic, and political contingencies against climate uncertainties through the universalising rubrics
and rationalities of finance, so too must they be understood to be simultaneously provincial and cosmopolitan, contingent yet interdependent, powerful yet malleable.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Ricardo Cardoso and Jane M. Jacobs for the
opportunity to conduct research in Singapore as a Visiting Scholar at YaleNUS College in Autumn 2019, to Rachel Bok, Liliana Gil, and Andrew
Moon for lively debates in and about Singapore, and re/insurance industry
members for interviews and access to their spaces of practice. Thanks is also
extended to the organisers and participants of the ‘Climate, Society, and
Insurance: Capacities and Limitations’ International Academic Forum at
the University of Tasmania and to Manuel Aalbers and members of the Real
Estate/Financial Complex Research Group at the University of Leuven for
their feedback on earlier drafts of this work. This research was funded by a
H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship (ID: 799711).
of the construction of local re/insurance markets, which underpin distinctive urban political-economic projects. Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance
Corporation has been among the most prolific catastrophe bond issuers in
recent years (Table 11.1). Public insurers in Louisiana and Texas are also
among early issuers in Singapore (Table 11.2). Beyond issuing ILS, Florida
state agencies invest in the market, and shape private insurer demand for reinsurance through regulations, subsidies, and guarantees, as part of a broader
play to secure its housing- and property development-driven political economy (Taylor 2020). Similarly, the Singapore government maintains a grant
scheme for ILS market entrants, which offsets the costs of preparing a new
issuance. The case also highlights indirect forms of state-firm collaboration
and intervention, like public-private partnerships which sponsor risk-related
scientific research in Singapore, or state-sanctioned real estate growth strategies which reproduce a structural market for re/insurance in Florida. While
states actively seek to extend re/insurance markets to further particular policy
outcomes, it is important to recognise that inherited public policies, enduring
path dependencies, and evolving state capacities can also normalise or otherwise enable specific re/insurance market patterns and logics. How, then, do
these patterns of statecraft shape how, where, and when urban geographies
come to be entangled with re/insurance? And how might they be repurposed
to confront emerging dilemmas raised by climate disruptions?
These three focal points – circulations of tools and techniques, risk capital
flows, and shifting state engagement – seek to populate a critical imagination for how we might continue to trace the evolving project of re/insurance
within and between urban geographies, in the face of complex headwinds
on the horizon. Insofar as these risk underwriting institutions increasingly
govern diverse configurations of ecological, economic, and political contingencies against climate uncertainties through the universalising rubrics
and rationalities of finance, so too must they be understood to be simultaneously provincial and cosmopolitan, contingent yet interdependent, powerful yet malleable.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Ricardo Cardoso and Jane M. Jacobs for the
opportunity to conduct research in Singapore as a Visiting Scholar at YaleNUS College in Autumn 2019, to Rachel Bok, Liliana Gil, and Andrew
Moon for lively debates in and about Singapore, and re/insurance industry
members for interviews and access to their spaces of practice. Thanks is also
extended to the organisers and participants of the ‘Climate, Society, and
Insurance: Capacities and Limitations’ International Academic Forum at
the University of Tasmania and to Manuel Aalbers and members of the Real
Estate/Financial Complex Research Group at the University of Leuven for
their feedback on earlier drafts of this work. This research was funded by a
H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship (ID: 799711).