Press release
Paris, November 9, 2022 – SCOR today announces very short-term emergency measures to deal with its losses for the first nine months of the year. While the consequences of climate change are becoming increasingly costly for reinsurers, SCOR is missing a new opportunity to stop its coverage for new gas fields. This is essential to meet its own climate commitments and to avoid worsening climate impacts and costs for SCOR. Reclaim Finance once again calls on SCOR to follow its three direct competitors, Munich Re, Swiss Re and Hannover Re, who have all committed this year to stop covering such projects.
SCOR was supposed to release its new strategic vision for the next 3 years. Its CEO Laurent Rousseau preferred to announce short-term measures to contain its net losses, which now amount to €509 million over the first three quarters of the year, notably due to natural catastrophes (nat cat) (2). These measures over one year focus mainly on ways to return to profitability, such as increasing the price of its cover and reducing its exposure to nat cat. There are no key measures to stop supporting new gas fields, which are fuelling climate change and its consequences on SCOR’s results.
Ariel Le Bourdonnec, insurance campaigner at Reclaim Finance: “Instead of proposing long-term measures to address the causes of climate change, SCOR continues its headlong rush to insure projects that bring it short-term profits. A short-term vision that fuels natural disasters and ruins its reinsurance business model. By maintaining its support for new gas fields, SCOR is once again missing the opportunity to put the climate at the heart of its strategy.”
Last May, SCOR (3) only committed to stop covering new oil fields – while preserving exceptions (4) – and defended its continued support for new gas fields, pretending that gas was a transitional energy, a misconception often used by the Paris financial center to justify its support for gas expansion. However, as recalled in the World Energy Outlook 2022 (5) recently published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), no new gas fields are allowed in a 1.5°C trajectory aiming at achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
The High-Level Expert Group on Net Zero Commitments (6) established under the aegis of the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, recalled yesterday that the Net Zero commitments of private actors could not be met without the respect of several imperatives, including a halt to oil and gas expansion. SCOR, a founding member of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA) (7), is therefore jeopardizing its credibility in terms of climate change, in addition to lagging far behind the largest international reinsurers: Munich Re (8), Swiss Re (9) and Hannover Re (10), also members of the NZIA, have all committed to no longer providing coverage to new oil and gas fields.
Reclaim Finance calls on SCOR to catch up with its competitors as soon as possible and to refuse to cover any new gas field, which is a necessary step to reach its carbon neutrality objective by 2050.