World's largest P&C insurers fall short on climate and sustainability, ShareAction benchmark finds

Allianz topped a new ranking of the world’s 40 largest property and casualty insurers on climate and sustainability, but the industry’s underwriting practices remain a long way from aligning with a credible climate transition and the pace of new commitments has stalled significantly since 2024, according to London-based ​charity ShareAction.

The 2026 Insuring Disaster benchmark, which evaluates insurers on their approach to climate change, fossil fuel extraction, biodiversity loss, social risk ‌and governance, found Allianz leading 30 conventional insurers with a B grade, meeting 12 of 20 standards and scoring 58% overall.

Achmea ranked second with a B grade, 10 standards met and 44%, followed by Axa with a C and 49%, Swiss Re with a C and 36% and Hannover Re with a C and 35%.

At the bottom of the conventional insurer rankings, American ​International Group, Liberty Mutual, Travelers, China Pacific Insurance Group, Santam, People’s Insurance Company Group of China and WR Berkley all received F grades and met ​zero standards, with scores ranging from 5% down to 2%.

European insurers achieved the strongest overall benchmark performance, likely reflecting more ⁠mature sustainability regulation in the EU, with a correlation also observed between individual country scores and the strength of their regulatory environment as measured by WWF’s Sustainable ​Financial Regulations and Central Bank Activities tracker.

However, the report noted that Asian insurers outperformed both European and North American peers on biodiversity, driven by widespread adoption of ​the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) framework. ShareAction said that TNFD-aligned assessments generally produced more useful insights than EU compliance-led approaches, suggesting current regulation may be underestimating biodiversity risk.

Among 10 Lloyd’s of London managing agents assessed on underwriting performance, Axis Managing Agency ranked first, meeting two standards with a score of 23%. RenaissanceRe Syndicate Management ranked last, meeting no standards and scoring 0%.

The ​report found Lloyd’s managing agents performed significantly worse than conventional insurers across most metrics.

Only three of the 10 independent managing agents — Axis, Beazley Furlonge and Hiscox — ​had any underwriting restriction on upstream thermal coal, compared to 80% of conventional insurers. None of the independent managing agents had publicly disclosed 2050 net zero underwriting targets, versus 64% of ‌conventional insurers.

The ⁠benchmark also identified significant gaps in fossil fuel restrictions more broadly.

While thermal coal restrictions are the most common, a third of insurers still have none. Conventional oil and gas expansion remains almost entirely insurable, with 73% of insurers placing no restrictions on new projects.

Where underwriting restrictions do exist, 62% contain at least one exemption, including transition plan carve-outs, board-level discretionary overrides and geographic exemptions, which the report said “substantially weaken the practical effect of many policies and limit their ability to constrain fossil ​fuel expansion.”

ShareAction also identified a major structural ​gap in treaty reinsurance. Of the ⁠32 insurers in the study that provide treaty reinsurance, all but three applied their fossil fuel underwriting restrictions only to direct insurance and facultative reinsurance, leaving treaty reinsurance, which covers entire portfolios rather than individual risks, largely unrestricted.

ShareAction said that while ​applying restrictions at the treaty level is structurally more difficult due to limited visibility over individual insured entities, early examples ​of exposure-based thresholds ⁠for thermal coal and Arctic oil and gas had been implemented.

Without broader adoption, the report warned that treaty reinsurance would remain a standing gap undermining the credibility of other restrictions already in place.

Overall, the report found that progress has stalled. Of 20 conventional insurers tracked across ShareAction’s 2021, 2024 and 2026 benchmarks, adoption of thermal coal and oil ⁠and gas ​restrictions and biodiversity considerations had not advanced since 2024, following notable growth in the years prior.

The charity ​said the slowdown could reflect exhausted low-hanging fruit, greater conservatism among remaining insurers, or the impact of the broader ESG backlash, a trend it said was echoed in its 2025 assessments of asset ​managers and banks.

However, ShareAction highlighted one positive finding — that insurers which made commitments in 2024 had largely retained and in some cases strengthened them, with little backtracking observed.