Executive Certificate in Climate Risk Insurance
Course Overview
Climate change is reshaping global risk landscapes, intensifying the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, slow-onset climatic shifts, and systemic climate-related shocks. These evolving climate risks increasingly affect insurers, reinsurers, governments, financial institutions, communities, and businesses worldwide—impacting agriculture, infrastructure, sovereign budgets, supply chains, and household resilience.
Africa, while contributing least to global emissions, is among the regions most exposed to climate extremes. However, African markets have also become global laboratories of innovation in climate risk insurance—particularly in parametric insurance, sovereign risk pooling, disaster risk finance, and inclusive climate protection models. Lessons from Africa now inform global thinking, positioning the continent not only as a climate-vulnerable region but also as a leader in resilience and climate risk innovation.
This Executive Certificate is therefore positioned as a globally benchmarked programme delivered from Africa. It integrates international best-practice frameworks, rigorous insurance and risk-financing methodologies, and advanced technical competencies, while grounding learning in practical African and emerging-market realities. Participants will develop hands-on competence to design, price, govern, finance, and operationalise climate risk insurance solutions applicable globally.
The programme is designed for:
- Insurance and reinsurance professionals
- Risk managers and actuaries
- Regulators and policymakers
- Development finance and humanitarian risk leads
- Sovereign disaster risk finance practitioners
- Climate resilience and finance professionals
Learning Objectives
Upon successful completion of this Executive Certificate, learners will be able to:
- Interpret climate change and disaster risk dynamics and translate climate science, extreme events, and slow-onset risks into actionable insurance, risk-financing, and resilience strategies;
- Design and evaluate climate risk insurance solutions across sovereign, meso, and market levels, applying appropriate product structures including indemnity, parametric, hybrid, and layered approaches;
- Apply Disaster Risk Finance (DRF) frameworks to determine optimal combinations of insurance, reserves, contingent credit, reinsurance, and capital market instruments for different risk layers and client contexts;
- Use climate, weather, hydrological, and exposure data responsibly, assessing data quality, managing uncertainty, and making robust insurance decisions in data-constrained and non-stationary climate environments;
- Interpret catastrophe modelling outputs and climate risk metrics, including AAL, PML, loss exceedance curves, and scenario stress tests, to support underwriting, pricing, and portfolio risk management decisions;
- Price climate risk insurance sustainably under uncertainty, incorporating frequency–severity analysis, volatility, climate trends, capital requirements, and affordability considerations;
- Structure effective reinsurance and alternative risk transfer solutions, engaging reinsurers and capital markets to manage capacity, volatility, and systemic climate risk;
- Design and operationalise climate insurance programmes with sound governance, distribution, payout, and claims mechanisms that ensure transparency, accountability, and timely financial protection;
- Navigate policy, regulatory, and stakeholder environments, engaging governments, regulators, development partners, and communities to build effective public–private partnerships for climate risk insurance;
- Evaluate the impact, ethics, and sustainability of climate insurance programmes, ensuring consumer protection, value for money, resilience outcomes, and long-term trust;
- Integrate technical, financial, and governance considerations to deliver end-to-end climate risk insurance solutions aligned with global best practice and local market realities, and
- Develop and present a comprehensive, real-world climate risk insurance solution, demonstrating applied competence in risk analysis, product design, pricing, data use, financing, governance, and impact through a capstone project.
