From the Paris Agreement and also from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] it’s always been clear that all actors in society need to do their part to help avoid such a climate crisis. That includes the financial sector, and insurance companies in particular have a responsibility because they are very well aware of the risks that are facing society.

Some of them have been warning about climate risks for more than 40 years, so it is just completely inconsistent with their own expertise, but also with their public brands, that they would still insure coal. Although since 2017 things have obviously changed a bit.

We’ve always been able to make a financial argument about why investors should no longer invest in coal and other fossil fuels – that’s the stranded assets argument. But insurers, their contracts go year-to-year, and so they’ve always said: ‘As long as we can still write contracts, we’ll be fine.’

So our first argument was one around the complete moral hypocrisy, to warn about climate risks while insuring and facilitating the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

In the meantime, things have changed. There is now a growing wave of climate litigation, trying to hold the primary actors behind the climate crisis to account, make them pay up for the damages created by climate change – and that, of course, includes fossil fuel companies, which in turn typically have liability insurance covered by some major insurance company.

So far no fossil fuel company has been forced to pay for damages caused by climate change. But attribution science is improving and it’s becoming scientifically easier to attribute certain events and their damages to climate change. So it’s likely only a matter of time until the first climate lawsuits will be successful.

With this evolving context, insurers also have a clear financial self-interest to no longer insure coal. As a matter of fact, only last week we saw a new briefing paper from Moody’s Investors Service, which said insurers refraining from coal is a credit-positive, meaning it improves their creditworthiness. It’s another clear financial argument from the most respected source.

I would say some of the early movers were AXA, Allianz, Swiss Re, and Zurich.

There are certain clear laggards. Even with those that have acted – and so far it’s been 19 major insurers that have moved away from coal – there are some serious loopholes.

But there are some important remaining pockets of insurers still underwriting coal. We can list them quite quickly. In Europe that’s the Lloyd’s market – some of the speciality insurers using the Lloyd’s market have moved away from coal, like AXIS Capital, but most have not. They are a significant player and the only major player left in Europe – they need to move.

Then of course there are still major insurers in the United States that try to deny this reality that we need to move away from coal as quickly as possible. Most importantly, AIG.

Then the Asian insurers, starting with the Japanese but also Korean and Chinese insurers. Most of the new coal power plants in the pipeline are in Asia – South East Asia, East Asia, South Asia.

Outside China, they are typically insured by international insurers, mostly from the West, but as they are now withdrawing from that market, the Japanese and Korean insurers will be under increasing pressure from their power companies to insure this business.