Abstract
The changes in the approach of insurance companies to risk assessment related to climate change are the subject of the analysis. The following risks were taken into account: material risk resulting directly from extreme weather phenomena, legal and regulatory risk related to international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reputation risk associated with preferences of increasingly aware stakeholders. The policy against coal sector and divestments demonstrated by chosen insurance companies were analyzed. Observations concerned the insurance markets in the years 2015–2018 with particular emphasis on the coal sector in Poland. As a result of the research, it was found that the changes in the understanding and transparency of climate risk reporting affect the functioning of the financial sector in relation to investments in conventional coal mining and energy production. The new global trend is divestment from the coal industry. This may have a major impact on the future functioning of this sector in Poland, where the transition to a low-emission economy is still too slow. This is related to the gradual withdrawal of foreign insurance companies from the Polish coal sector. This may put the carbon industry and Polish insurers in a difficult situation in the near future.
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Burchard-Dziubinska, M. (2020). Divestment from Coal Sector in Response to Higher Risk Assessment by Insurance Companies: Poland Case Study. In: Daszyńska-Żygadło, K., Bem, A., Ryszawska, B., Jáki, E., Hajdíková, T. (eds) Finance and Sustainability. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34401-6_5
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