Help us shape our SERI work. See the updates from our second Advisory Group meetings, and the summary outputs from our first Advisory Group meetings. If you think your work is relevant, share your thoughts with us on: seri@icebreakerone.org.
Overview
SERI (Standard for Environment, Risk and Insurance) is a UKRI and Climate-KIC funded programme bringing partner organisations and leading institutions to bridge the data gaps between finance and climate change. Its aim is to build the shared data infrastructure that will underpin and enable a transition to a green economy and to a green financial system.
Current SERI partners: Aon, Arup, Agvesto, Bird & Bird, Brit Insurance, ClimateWise, Dais LLP, Lloyd’s Register Group, Cambridge Zero at the University of Cambridge and Willis Towers Watson.
If you would like to join our work on SERI, please email seri@icebreakerone.org
SERI was born out of an 18-month consultation with the insurance industry, policymakers and individual practitioners, during which the project team had conversations with more than 230 experts. During our consultation, we heard that as large climate-driven catastrophic events occur with higher frequency, the UK’s insurance market needs to evolve. While huge opportunities exist to deliver innovative financing for a resilient and net-zero future, a lack of data-flow is leading to the misallocation of resources and missed opportunities which creates catastrophic risks on our global balance sheets
The wealth of environmental, financial, and risk data we as a society hold must be used to direct capital to address our climate and environmental crises while helping reduce transaction costs and increase the use of shared data within the insurance sector.
SERI aims to create a clear, impactful and detailed data governance framework (the Standard for Environment, Risk and Insurance) that enables government, businesses, consumers and 3rd party developers to understand the potential of sector-wide data sharing in insurance to develop climate-ready financial products. Using industry-defined use cases to frame user needs, it will detail the steps to implementation in the UK and empower decision-makers to mandate, measure and act upon the data-flows that enable Net Zero.
How are we doing this?
Building upon the approach of the Open Banking Standard, co-chaired by Gavin Starks (Icebreaker One’s CEO), we are acting as an independent third party to convene the relevant stakeholders; insurance brokers, data providers, legal expertise, and academic researchers. This enables us to break-through silos to overcome this collective action challenge.
In 2020, the SERI programme focussed on developing climate-ready financial products to enable insurers to invest in demonstrably net-zero financial products and services. In 2021, the SERI programme has been focussing on a Climate-Ready Building Passport concept to develop a use case to explore what can be enabled with a shared data infrastructure. The use case will also be used to identify data requirements & stakeholders necessary to shape the governance framework for sharing data within the insurance sector. To do this, we have been engaging with our partners, and have formed Advisory Groups to engage with a broader base of stakeholders around key pieces of our strands of work:
- Advisory Group 1: Commercialisation and User Needs focussing on the development and validation of a specific climate-ready building passport use-case, articulating the user needs addressed by and market opportunities enabled by having an open standard for data sharing within the insurance sector.
- Advisory Group 2: Systems and Standards focussing on the development of high-level operational and technical guidance for the governance framework, the concept map for the standard, and recommendations for principles and practices to enable the standard.
Check out what our Advisory Groups have been discussing — see our update from the second Advisory Group meetings, and our summary outputs from the first Advisory Group meetings. If you think your work is relevant, get in touch with us on: seri@icebreakerone.org.
Our Work in 2020
On the 18th of November, we hosted a show and tell as part of London Climate Action Week – our team presented on progress eight months into the programme to develop a Standard for Environmental Risk and Insurance (SERI).