As the Insurance Development Forum marks its 10-year anniversary, we speak with Wynne Lawrence, Partner at Clyde & Co and member of the IDF Steering Committee, about the role of law, policy and public–private collaboration in building climate resilience.
With a career spanning reinsurance, climate risk and emerging liability risks, Wynne reflects on why the IDF’s mission resonates so strongly with her work, and how legal and regulatory frameworks can enable innovative risk transfer, strengthen insurance markets and narrow protection gaps in emerging and developing economies. From thought leadership on insurance regulation to technology-enabled solutions and resilient infrastructure investment, her reflections highlight the critical role of legal insight in turning resilience ambition into practical action.
What initially motivated you to take on a role within the IDF Steering Committee, and what aspects of the Forum’s mission resonated most strongly with your work on climate risk and resilience?
I am a Partner in the London office of Clyde & Co LLP. We are a global law firm with a strong insurance focus and my practice is specialised in Reinsurance and Climate Risk. The firm has been a supporter of the IDF since its inception; we host the Secretariat in our London office and provide other pro bono and thought leadership support to the IDF and its projects. It is a clear choice for the firm and for me personally and professionally to support the IDF and its mission. As a reinsurance practitioner I am well aware of the increasing impacts of climate risk on my clients and their clients, as well as the obvious and disproportionate impacts on Emerging Markets and Developing Economies. This global challenge demands innovative solutions and as a unique public-private partnership the IDF is part of a developing architecture of innovation that will drive long-term resilience. The IDF offers a platform for dialogue, capacity-building and learning, as well as practical action, and I’m proud to be part of the conversation and direction through the SteerCo.
Over the past decade, which developments or turning points stand out to you as the most significant in advancing the IDF’s agenda, particularly in relation to climate liability, legal risk, and resilience frameworks?
As a lawyer, I see first-hand the impact of legal and policy frameworks in shaping enabling conditions for innovative risk modelling, risk transfer, and enhancing insurance protections for the most vulnerable. Some of the most interesting aspects of the IDF’s work over the last 10 years have come out of the IDF’s Law Regulation and Resilience Policies working group, in contributions to thought leadership on law and policymaking to enhance resilience. One stand-out example is the 2022 paper co-authored with the Geneva Association: Insurance Development in Emerging Markets: The role of public policy and regulation. With important contributions from (re)insurance market professionals, leaders in organisations like the Access to Initiative (A2ii), the OECD, and IDF and EMDE insurance experts and academics, the paper sets out legal and policy gaps as well as concrete steps that governments can take to enhance financial literacy, modernise insurance regulatory regimes and build political support for insurance as a driver of societal prosperity. The IDF and its members and partners continue to build on this important conversation with EMDEs and other international stakeholders as they work to enhance resilience through insurance development.
Drawing on your experience as a thought leader in climate litigation and emerging liability risks, where do you believe the IDF has made the greatest progress in strengthening global climate resilience and narrowing the protection gap?
Liability risk is often considered a type of transition risk, but I tend to think of it as a risk that, in part, is itself the result of increasing physical and transition risks. Increasing loss and damage caused by climate change increases the stakes and thus the risks of litigation against governments and corporates alike. Where governments and companies fail to adapt to changing climate risk and enhanced regulation around climate risk management, there is also heightened liability risk. It has been fascinating to observe the global insurance industry taking a leadership role in understanding climate risk and pushing for the integration of climate risk management across businesses and sectors. In the last 10 years we have seen that (re)insurers increasingly understand that they can contribute to resilience as asset owners. By reducing the impact of physical climate risk, resilient investment can have a positive impact on the underwriting side of the balance sheet. This was highlighted recently in the November 2025 report from UNEP-FI: A Total Balance Sheet Transition: A holistic transition plan guide linking the underwriting and investment portfolios of insurers and reinsurers.
The IDF provides some useful blueprints for how the industry can collectively lower climate risks with a holistic approach. In particular, the Infrastructure Resilience Development Fund (IRDF), launched late last year by the IDF, is designed to meet the investment criteria of the insurance sector and will invest in small to medium sized resilient infrastructure projects in EMDEs.
As lead author of the IDF’s “Technology and the Protection Gap” report, how have you seen technology’s role evolve within the risk and resilience landscape, and where do you see the greatest potential for innovation in the coming decade?
In the 2019 paper, we looked at three closely interrelated technologies that were advancing the understanding of natural hazard and weather risk and could enable the insurance industry to create innovative solutions for governments to protect citizens and infrastructure:
- The increasing availability of data through earth observation, the internet of things and crowdsourcing
- The increasing capacity to process that data through AI
- New tools for communicating risk data and mitigation advice
New tools for communicating risk data and mitigation advice
We’re a few years on now, and it has been fascinating to watch the exponential growth of AI technology and its applications as well as the development and deployment of real-world innovation across the insurance market, enhancing resilience to climate risks. I’ve personally been involved in assisting clients bring to market a number of technology-enabled parametric insurance products. A few other examples that spring to mind are from the UNEP-FI Forum for Insurance Transition to Net Zero report on Underwriting the Transition:
- heatwave parametric insurance for workers in a major Asian city, where insured individuals are eligible to receive a payout or an “anti-heatwave kit” of an equivalent value, when the temperature exceeds a given temperature for 3 consecutive days
- promotion of preventative health measures through well-being apps, and access to digital advice that expands access to appointments through online tools while improving carbon efficiency.
As earth observation investment for climate science at the national and international level looks set to decrease in favour of a space economy increasingly focussed on private returns and defence, there may be increased innovation in enhancing the quality and consistency of crowdsourced data collection on weather.
From your vantage point in insurance and regulatory advisory work, what do you see as the most important strengths of the IDF’s public–private partnership model? Where have the biggest challenges or learnings emerged?
The IDF provides an important forum to readily translate the real-world experience of the insurance market in enhancing access to insurance to stakeholders who shape and influence policy and market development. The IDF gives voice to the importance of insurance tools and risk-transfer as a key building block of global resilience. At the same time, those working through international fora or at the national level on fostering climate-resilient development are able to help the insurance market understand the unique challenges and concerns of EMDEs and their citizens. With an approach that focuses on both advocacy and implementation, the IDF has increasingly been the catalyst for practical projects and initiatives that translate the original vision of insurance as an enabler of resilient and sustainable development into tangible action. It is the evidence of programs such as the Tripartite Agreement Programme that feed a virtuous circle of greater understanding of insurance and public-private collaboration as an engine of adaptation.
What have you found most rewarding about contributing to the IDF’s work, particularly at the intersection of legal risk, resilience, and global insurance systems?
As a lawyer, my work often involves translation between legal principles and their commercial implications and a key skill in legal drafting is reducing complex concepts to definitions and descriptions that are understandable, predictable and clear. What fascinates me with the work of the IDF is the diversity of voices and institutional ‘languages’ that are brought around one table (in fact, many tables!) to work towards shared goals. The work of the IDF is a bright reminder of the power of how a diversity of voices across the public and private sectors, an international approach and collaboration, can foster and expedite innovation and thought leadership. Being part of the translation of that rich discussion into clear policy proposals and tangible outcomes is for me the most rewarding aspect of working with the IDF.
As the IDF enters its second decade, which priorities, policy shifts, or areas of action do you believe will be most critical for the Forum and its partners to maximise their impact?
A key mandate for the IDF as articulated by Secretary General Ekhoseuhi Iyahen is to contribute to building future ready nations. Looking at the challenge from the angle of climate adaptation and resilience to planetary boundary risk, as well as from a legal angle, this will involve timely and thoughtful regulatory interventions. These cannot take place in a silo and so it will remain critical for those working at the forefront of insurance market development, whether in the public or private sector, to share best practice and build capacity in legal and regulatory architectures for understanding, managing and financing risk.
