Tower Insurance’s annual funding of the University of Waikato’s Bachelor of Climate Change programme is entering its sixth year. Given the volume of regulatory and market evidence now accumulating around climate risk in New Zealand and the Pacific, the programme’s commercial logic has become harder to dismiss as reputational positioning.
On July 23, Tower announced the 2026 recipients of its $5,000 annual scholarships: Lagi Talalupe (pictured centre), Genifer Tadielo (pictured right), and Ayla Montgomerie (pictured left). Two of the three are from outside New Zealand. Talalupe, 19, is Samoan and intends to return home after completing her degree. Tadielo relocated from Brazil 13 years ago and is now a New Zealand citizen studying Environmental Science and Hydrology.
The claims data framing Tower’s investment has worsened materially. Between autumn 2025 and summer 2026, IAG’s AMI, State, and NZI brands recorded 33,174 claims from 46 storms – a 256% increase on the prior year’s 9,324 claims from 29 storms. Over a 15-year timeline, a storm typically affected parts of the country once every 19 days; in the most recent 12 months, that frequency more than doubled to once every eight days, according to IAG’s Wild Weather Tracker Issue 8, published in April 2026. At the sector level, the full-year 2025 extreme weather total reached $278.2 million, according to the Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) Cost of Natural Disasters database, with South Island severe weather events in October 2025 generating $158.9 million in insured losses from nearly 17,000 claims.
The forward-looking data compounds the near-term picture. Vero Insurance’s October 2025 climate-related financial disclosure – prepared under New Zealand’s mandatory reporting regime – projects that average annual losses from extreme weather could rise by 19% to 26% by mid-century, driven primarily by sea-level rise and more frequent surface water flooding, with less than 1.5% of insured coastal properties expected to account for all projected coastal inundation losses.
The policy environment is now moving on a fixed statutory timetable. The Climate Change Commission’s 2026 National Climate Change Risk Assessment, published in May, identifies the most significant risks to New Zealand’s economy, society, and environment across 37 climate-related risks in seven domains, and will inform the government’s next national adaptation plan, due in 2028. The Commission’s next progress report on the current national adaptation plan is due by August 2026.
That timetable has direct implications for insurers writing property in high-hazard areas. A January 2026 report by the Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake (NHC) examined the intersection of private insurance retreat and managed retreat policy, finding that together, the trade-offs that governments, insurers, and communities must navigate when responding to increasing natural-hazard risks raise complex policy questions about how insurance can support or complicate managed retreat and how new insurance models might help fund relocation.
ICNZ chief executive Kris Faafoi, responding to the Commission’s assessment, said: “New Zealand must act to get ahead of growing climate risk. Building resilience to risks such as floods, coastal inundation, and erosion will help protect families, businesses, and communities and maintain insurance accessibility."
Emily Davies, Tower’s head of corporate affairs and sustainability, connected the sector’s exposure to the programme’s purpose. “The increasing frequency and severity of weather events is one of the biggest challenges society faces, with implications for people, communities, and the long-term affordability of insurance,” she said.
Tower operates across six markets: New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, and the Cook Islands. Its Pacific gross written premium reached $42 million in the year ended September 30, 2025, according to Tower’s FY25 Climate Statement. The insurer’s regional presence comes as Pacific Small Island Developing States face a widening protection gap. Increasingly severe cyclones, floods, droughts, and sea-level rise are compounded by limited access to pre-arranged, predictable, and affordable insurance and disaster risk financing that enables households and businesses to recover following climate shocks. Average annual losses from natural disasters across Pacific Small Island Developing States are estimated at US$1.1 billion.
Tower’s own disclosed scenario analysis is explicit about the commercial risk. Under its most severe hothouse scenario, the company’s FY25 Climate Statement identifies that insurer retreat from Pacific markets could follow the pattern already modelled for high-risk New Zealand properties, as those markets become less commercially viable. Talalupe’s stated intention speaks directly to that gap. “Samoa is still a developing country, and the availability of resources to address climate issues affecting Pacific nations is very limited, with other issues being prioritised,” Talalupe said. Scholarship recipient Tadielo addressed the industry’s structural position in her application essay. “Climate change will fundamentally reshape the insurance industry in Aotearoa. It will lead to more frequent and severe claims, higher costs, and changes in what can be insured. At the same time, it will drive innovation in technology and highlight the importance of education and sustainability,” Tadielo said.
Tower is the only New Zealand general insurer publicly funding a dedicated undergraduate climate change degree programme. IAG New Zealand operates an 18-month graduate programme that includes exposure to climate and disaster resilience work but has not publicly disclosed sponsorship of a dedicated undergraduate climate change scholarship comparable to Tower’s programme at the University of Waikato. Vero, which also publishes mandatory climate-related disclosures, has likewise not publicly disclosed a comparable initiative.
The broader New Zealand insurance sector is navigating the outward flow of experienced professionals to Australia and the UK, a trend that shortens internal career ladders and reduces mentoring capacity for those entering the industry. Building professionals who can work across climate science, risk modelling, and adaptation policy – the disciplines that managed retreat, risk-based pricing, and parametric product development all require – is a gap the sector has not systematically addressed.
The University of Waikato’s Bachelor of Climate Change, which the university describes as the world’s first undergraduate degree of its kind, equips graduates to work across government agencies, private companies, and sustainability consultancies, culminating in a multidisciplinary project with an external organisation.
