AXA Insurance UK is moving further into climate-risk advisory services with the launch of a free SME training programme aimed at helping businesses prepare for rising exposure to flooding and extreme weather.
The insurer partnered with AXA Climate to develop online modules focused on climate adaptation and resilience planning for small and medium-sized enterprises as part of a wider insurer push toward prevention and long-term risk management.
Climate risk has remained among the leading concerns identified in AXA’s Future Risks research for several consecutive years, with climate change continuing to rank highly alongside geopolitical instability and cybersecurity threats.
AXA said SMEs often face difficulties assessing how climate-related risks could affect the long-term viability of their operations, premises, products and supply chains. The programme is intended to help businesses begin evaluating those exposures and consider adaptation planning.
“For SMEs, it can be challenging to look ahead and assess what increasing extreme weather risks may mean for their businesses in years to come,” said Grace Hanson-Eden, head of sustainability at AXA Insurance UK. “By working with AXA Climate, we’ve developed a programme that gives them a launchpad to begin to explore building an effective adaptation strategy to identify and address their exposure to extreme weather risks.
“Businesses need the right framework to start thinking strategically about resilience and long-term viability in a rapidly changing world,” Hanson-Eden added. “Our aim is to share AXA’s 40 years of risk-management expertise in a way that helps SMEs make informed decisions about their future.”
The programme is intended to complement its traditional claims role, with modules focused on resilience planning and climate-related risks affecting customers and supply chains.
In AXA’s 2025 Future Risks Report, 89% of experts and 72% of the general population said insurers have an important role in protecting against future risks, while 86% of experts and 84% of the public said the risks that concern them most could be at least partly reduced through preventive action.
AXA’s 2024 Future Risks Report also found that 91% of experts believed insurers have a crucial role in protecting people against emerging risks.
Climate change has ranked among AXA’s leading future risks since at least 2022, even while geopolitical instability, cyber risk and artificial intelligence concerns have risen in successive reports. AXA’s 2025 report said climate change remained the top-ranked risk among experts for the fifth consecutive year, although geopolitical instability and cybersecurity were narrowing the gap.
AXA’s 2022 Future Risks Report described climate risk as the leading concern across all global regions for the first time. The 2023 edition later described a global “polycrisis” linking climate threats with geopolitical tensions, cyber exposures and technological disruption.
Outside AXA’s own research, the World Economic Forum said in its Global Risks Report 2026 that extreme weather events remain among the most severe global risks over both short- and long-term timeframes, while environmental risks continue to rank highly despite rising concern over geopolitical and economic instability.
AXA Climate launched AXA Climate School in 2021 to provide climate and environmental adaptation training across AXA’s workforce globally. A shorter version was later introduced in the UK for brokers and customers.
Several modules have now been adapted specifically for SMEs, with content focused on understanding climate exposures and improving resilience planning.
“It’s a free, bitesize resource that’s easy to implement. It helps SMEs focus on practical steps they can take that will have a positive impact on their own businesses, customers and wider society against a backdrop of rising costs and an increasingly difficult operating environment for SMEs,” Hanson-Eden said.
“As an insurer, we do more than just settle claims. We want to create partnerships with our customers that offer multiple benefits for their businesses, and this provides practical solutions to complex problems that can be implemented without huge expense,” she added.
The SME adaptation modules have already been introduced in Italy and Spain, with the insurer citing their application across different operating environments and climate conditions.
