Australian and international responses to climate change are paving the way for businesses to better understand and manage risks, and there is no time to waste, Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) CEO Emma Herd says.

The IGCC represents institutional investors. It aims to increase clarity around climate change and encourage policies and practices that address the issue.

She says a taskforce requested by G20 leaders is working on recommendations for clearer, comparable, climate-related risk information to be made available by companies.

“Globally we are seeing a sustained push for better, deeper disclosure on climate-related financial risk,” Ms Herd told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “Making sure the data is there so investors and insurers can be making the right decisions and pricing on the right data is fundamentally important.”

Physical risks from weather-related events, liability risks and transition risks amid regulatory change are among the challenges for business.

Ms Herd was a speaker at the Actuaries Institute Climate Change Risks seminar in Sydney on Thursday.

She says business, environment and community groups want a more bipartisan climate policy approach in Australia, and broad support for last year’s Paris agreement is a positive sign.

“All the indications are that the Government and the major parties are hearing that call and I think we are moving into a much more constructive and productive policy discussion around how do we deal with some of these issues,” she told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

“The politics of the past 5-10 years have made it very hard for companies to respond in a proactive manner because they have been very much caught in the jaws of the political conversation.”

Ms Herd says Australian insurers are accustomed to dealing with a volatile climate, but rising risks pose a major challenge in a country whose population is mostly near the coast, and that has water and energy-intensive industries.

“It is in everybody’s best interests to be investing now, to increase the resilience of our infrastructure to the changes we know are coming,” she said.