Photo from Insurance Bureau of Canada
Four of the world’s major insurance trade bodies have formalised a new cross-border alliance aimed at tackling growing protection gaps, climate risk and emerging exposures including cyber and artificial intelligence.
The Four Nations Insurance Alliance, announced in London on Tuesday, brings together the Association of British Insurers (ABI), Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) and Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ).
Together, the organisations represent insurers writing roughly US$200 billion (£150.6 billion) in annual premiums.
The non-binding partnership will give the associations a more formal mechanism for exchanging data and policy approaches across markets that share similar legal, regulatory and insurance structures.
Priorities include catastrophe resilience, public-private partnerships, insurance affordability, regulation, cyber risk, AI and geopolitical and supply-chain pressures.
The alliance comes as insurers across all four countries face a similar problem: maintaining affordable coverage as the underlying cost and concentration of risk increases.
“Insurance is the shock absorber of the economy,” ICA CEO Andrew Hall said.
“When it comes under strain, that is a signal the risk beneath it is growing, and the honest response is to reduce that risk, not to disguise it.
“Right now our economies spend far too much rebuilding after disasters and far too little preventing them, and that equation cannot hold.”
The relationship between the four associations predates the new alliance.
In October 2024, the same organisations convened a Global Insurance Protection Gap Forum in Sydney before jointly approaching their respective governments ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa. At the time, they called for greater focus on extreme weather, resilience and the widening gap between economic losses and those covered by insurance.
That earlier initiative identified several issues that have carried into the new alliance, including avoiding new development in high-risk areas, improving hazard information, investing in resilient infrastructure and examining the effect of insurance taxes and levies on affordability.
The Four Nations Insurance Alliance effectively puts a permanent framework around that collaboration while expanding its remit beyond natural catastrophes.
Members intend to compare approaches to public-private risk sharing and resilience investment, as well as regulatory responses to newer exposures such as AI and cyber.
ABI director general Hannah Gurga said the four countries were increasingly confronting the same pressures.
“The Four Nations Insurance Alliance will help us learn from one another’s experience, share what works and strengthen collaboration on solutions to those challenges,” Gurga said.
“As policymakers increasingly focus on how to narrow protection gaps and build resilience, this Alliance provides a valuable platform to bring together international experience and insurance expertise to help more households, businesses and communities access the protection they need.”
IBC president and CEO Celyeste Power similarly pointed to catastrophe risk as an area where lessons could transfer between markets, despite the countries’ differing climates.
“Each member of the Four Nations Insurance Alliance is experiencing catastrophic wind, flood and wildfire events that are taking a toll on residents and insurers,” Power said. “We need to urgently work together to address these risks.”
She said affordability would remain a central consideration as the associations work with governments on risk reduction.
The Four Nations partnership joins a longer history of international insurance groups formed to coordinate industry responses to risks that extend beyond individual jurisdictions.
The Global Federation of Insurance Associations (GFIA), for instance, was established in 2012 following several years of informal cooperation between national insurance associations. Its initial purpose was to give the industry a stronger collective voice with international regulatory bodies. GFIA now counts 46 member associations and three observers, representing insurers responsible for around 89% of global premiums.
Another model is the Insurance Development Forum (IDF), which emerged around the 2015 Paris climate summit and was formally developed as a partnership involving the insurance industry, United Nations and World Bank. Its focus has been narrower: using insurance expertise, risk modelling and financing mechanisms to reduce disaster protection gaps and improve resilience, particularly in vulnerable economies.
The Four Nations Alliance is neither a global insurance federation nor a multilateral development programme. Instead, it groups four mature insurance markets whose trade bodies argue that similarities in their regulatory systems and risk environments make policy lessons more readily transferable.
The partnership does not impose binding commitments on its members. It will operate through regular dialogue, joint initiatives, coordinated statements, research and knowledge sharing.
Among the areas under consideration are how governments and insurers can structure public-private partnerships where private markets struggle to absorb growing exposures, how hazard and claims data can support resilience spending, and whether regulatory approaches in one market can be adapted elsewhere.
ICNZ CEO Kris Faafoi said the ability to compare policy responses would be particularly important as governments grapple with maintaining insurance availability in higher-risk areas.
“Working as a collective of insurance industry bodies we want to ensure the shared challenge of resilience and risk reduction can be met to close protection gaps and keep communities safe,” Faafoi said.
“By working with governments and sharing our insights, we can ensure regulatory settings, technology and accessible insurance can strengthen the stability we value.”
