Wawanesa Insurance has joined the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), a global, industry-led initiative focused on strengthening the measurement and reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with financial-related activities, as part of its ongoing efforts to enhance how it assesses climate-related risks.
David Leibl, VP, Sustainability & Corporate Affairs at Wawanesa, said reliable climate-related information is increasingly important to how the company understands its business, meets evolving disclosure expectations, and supports the long-term resilience of the communities it serves.
"Joining PCAF supports our efforts to develop a consistent and well-founded approach to measuring emissions associated with our financial activities," he said.
PCAF provides a standardized approach that helps ensure GHG emissions associated with financial-related activities are measured and disclosed in a consistent and comparable way, and connects participants to a global network of financial institutions working to advance how GHG emissions are accounted for and reported.
By joining PCAF, Wawanesa intends to measure and disclose GHG emissions across a defined portion of its portfolio within three years, using established PCAF methodologies and subject to its determination of scope and data readiness.
Participation in PCAF is non-binding and does not impose requirements, targets, or constraints on Wawanesa's business, underwriting, or investment decisions, with the organization continuing to make those decisions independently.
The move lands as Canadian insurers work through a multi-year rollout of climate-related disclosure requirements under the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions' Guideline B-15.
OSFI's guideline directs federally regulated financial institutions to use the latest PCAF Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard, or a comparable methodology, when disclosing financed and insurance-associated GHG emissions.
Domestic systemically important banks and internationally active insurance groups have been reporting under the guideline since fiscal year 2024, while smaller and mid-sized insurers must comply from fiscal year 2025, with full Scope 3 emissions disclosure delayed to fiscal year 2028 following industry feedback that the timeline was too aggressive relative to data availability.
The push for better emissions measurement comes as Canadian insurers separately contend with a sharp rise in physical climate losses.
According to Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ), severe weather caused more than $2.4 billion in insured damage in 2025, the tenth costliest year on record, following a record $8.5 billion to $9.4 billion in 2024.
Insurance Bureau of Canada figures showed annual insured losses from catastrophic weather and wildfires totaled $37 billion between 2016 and 2025, nearly triple the $14 billion recorded between 2006 and 2015, with the average number of claims nearly doubling over the same period.
While PCAF membership speaks to transition-related risk measurement rather than physical catastrophe exposure directly, the two are increasingly treated as connected strands of the same climate risk file by Canadian regulators and industry bodies, including the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, which published a wildfire risk guide for P&C insurers earlier this year warning that wildfire has become "a growing and systemic challenge" for underwriting and pricing.
Founded in 1896 and headquartered in Winnipeg, Wawanesa is one of Canada's largest mutual insurers, wholly owned by its members, with more than $4.1 billion in annual revenue and $12.5 billion in assets.
In March 2026, the company entered into an agreement to acquire Everest Insurance Company of Canada to strengthen its commercial insurance capabilities.
The PCAF announcement also follows a series of climate-related initiatives from Wawanesa in recent months. In June, the insurer published its first integrated report examining the links between its financial and sustainability performance, and separately partnered with climate analytics firm Climative to pilot a free digital tool supporting wildfire resilience.
Wawanesa also donates more than $4 million annually to charitable organizations, including $2.5 million each year in support of people on the front lines of climate change, according to the company.
PCAF was launched globally in 2019, building on a methodology first developed by a group of Dutch financial institutions in 2015, and now counts more than 750 subscribing financial institutions worldwide.
For Wawanesa and its Canadian peers, joining that standard addresses one half of the climate risk equation, transition and financed emissions, at a time when the other half, physical catastrophe exposure, continues to grow faster than most insurers' pricing and underwriting models have historically assumed.
