Finity Climate Practice Leader Rade Musulin says actuaries can “make a significant contribution” at the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP27).

Mr Musulin, who is one of two global actuarial representatives attending the global climate change conference in Egypt, says he expects this year’s conference to focus on aiding climate adaptation for vulnerable nations and emphasise taking action on commitments made in previous conferences.

“We should expect to see a focus on developing countries in Africa and the Middle East, with issues to those countries such as water resources, extreme temperature and food security,” Mr Musulin said.

Mr Musulin says actuaries have already begun to play a notable role in providing insights on climate risks by utilising knowledge from other research areas.

“Actuarial skills and the thought processes that we’re trained in are very well suited to addressing climate sustainability issues, provided we’re flexible in our thinking.

“I think the key change in mindset actuaries need to make is to move beyond trying to use past insurance data to forecast future risk and look to use scenario analysis and scientific data,” he said.

Mr Musulin noted the utilisation of catastrophe models, translating data into economic losses and comparing the costs and benefits of hypothesised measures as some of the skills translatable towards climate adaptation projects.

He cites work done by Finity for the Insurance Council of Australia to support advocacy of weather resilience measures as a key example of how actuaries have contributed towards addressing climate challenges.