 Good morning. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. We are very glad to welcome you to this EESI briefing this morning on a topic that I think is deserving of considerable attention by policymakers who are serving from across the country as we look at this particular issue of insurance industry perspectives with regard to extreme weather events. I think this year has seen a buffeting across the country of extreme weather events that we've been looking at an uptick in the number of whether it is drought, flood, forest fires, extremely serious damaging tornadoes, thunderstorms, hurricanes, and of course seeing the northeast real from what just happened this fall with regard to hurricane Superstorm Sandy. So I think that it has really provided an acute focus for many of us in terms of looking at this cumulative series of events all of which take an enormous toll up on our country. In terms of people, families, communities, our infrastructure, property, so that there is an enormous human and property toll that affects all of us, affects our state governments, our local governments, our federal governments, and obviously all of us as families as we look at our own situations and our communities. So as we think about the fact that this is occurring and has been occurring more and more frequently, how do we do a better job of thinking about making our communities, making our infrastructure, making our families, our property. How do we help make all of this more resilient? Are there better ways to prepare? What's really at stake? What do we learn from the things that have happened that we've seen across the country in all sorts of natural disasters? What does that mean? What does that mean for us as we go forward? So this briefing, we hope will be the first of a series in terms of looking at ways to better manage this risk. How do we build in greater resilience? What are the stakes? What kinds of costs are we really looking at? In all sorts of areas, in terms of what this means, in terms of lost economic activity, what it means in terms of individual homes, communities, and indeed our private sector and our insurance sector. What does this mean? So we're going to hear from a very interesting and very expert panel this morning who bring many years of experience in terms of looking at this issue, very carefully watching because of their experience dealing with insurance and therefore having to think about risk. What does this mean for their industry, for their companies? So I am very glad to present our first speaker who is Frank Nutter, who is the President of the Re-Insurance Association of America. Frank has been working, observing, watching, studying, making recommendations, talking to people, not only across this country, but around the world. With regard to looking at disasters, how to deal with resilience, I know that many of us have sought out his voice, have eagerly listened to presentations that he's made over the course of the last 20 years, and so we are very, very glad that Frank is with us today to start off our discussion. Carol, thank you very much. It's a privilege to be here with you and appreciate the opportunity to talk about our industry's perspective on catastrophe losses. Re-insurance companies have a particular interest in catastrophe losses as the insurance industry tends to lay off its extreme catastrophe risk to the re-insurance markets globally. So it's fairly common in these events that the re-insurance community will pick up 50% of catastrophe-related losses, and that will be true in this Superstorm, Tropical Storm, Hurricane Sandy as well. And my role here is to give you some data context, if you will, for Sandy, in particular, as well as Sandy in the context of other disasters, and conclude with some suggestions about how the insurance industry sees solutions to these kinds of problems and to increase community resilience. So let me start with some Sandy-related data, and I thank the Insurance Information Institute for much of this information. Sandy is estimated to be the third most expensive hurricane in the United States in terms of insured losses following only Katrina and Hurricane Andrew, which was 1992, using adjusted, 2012 adjusted dollars. The industry expects to have nearly 1.4 million claims filed as a result of Sandy, and that is broken down largely along these lines of million claims related to homes, and nearly 250,000 automobile claims, which may seem a little unusual, but in a flooding event like this with people not having taken even simple precautions to move their cars or underestimating the likely impact, 250,000 automobile claims, and that if you looked at Sandy in the context of the United States in 2012, this is likely to be the third-costliest year for catastrophe losses that the industry has ever had. The industry relies on catastrophe modeling firms to help assess what the likely cost are going to be associated with these storms, and in this context there are three firms, and I put up here a slide showing the ranges that they have published. Most market people would estimate that the insured losses not counting the national flood insurance program, which I'll comment on in a second, likely to be 20 to 25 billion dollars when these claims ultimately get settled. If you looked at Sandy in the context of other events, particularly other hurricanes, and I realize Sandy was downgraded by the National Hurricane Center before it actually made landfall, so it was not technically a hurricane when it made landfall. You'll see that Sandy is likely to be the third most expensive hurricane. What's perhaps more notable, particularly in the context of this briefing, is that 10 of the 12 most costly hurricanes in terms of insurance claims paid have occurred just since 2004, a pretty remarkable stream of significant losses. I noticed in one article that someone referred to Hurricane Irene, which you'll see appear as the 4.4 billion won, which was just last year largely affecting much of the same geographical area was considered at that time unprecedented. And here we are one year later with a storm of even more significance. If you looked at Sandy in the context of all catastrophe related losses, and so here I'm including the 9-11 losses, I'm including earthquake related losses, again Sandy is particularly notable because of its enormous size, and again I'm not including the national flood insurance losses in this. And if you looked at Sandy in the context of world, the world losses. So now I'm talking about New Zealand earthquakes, floods in Australia, Chilean earthquake, again a series of fairly significant events in recent years, is that Sandy also will be, I think it says here, the sixth costliest event in global insurance history. So really a remarkable storm from the insurance industry's perspective. If you looked at insured catastrophe losses across the years, what you see here is an uneven pattern admittedly, but a pretty extraordinary series of events that have cost consumers and the insurance companies a remarkable amount of money over the last 20 years. This slide, and I realize it may be a little hard to see it, this slide is actually the number of events. It's not a dollar slide, but the number of events, and it really shows an obvious trend here. And the trend is broken down by seismic events, which is the lowest, the red column here, which you'll see is largely stable over time. As well as the storm related events, that would be the hurricane type events, the hydrological events, meaning flood in particular, the bluish lines, and then the climatological related events. So there you're talking about droughts in particular. So the trend line is pretty notable here in the United States for increased catastrophe related events as well as the losses. And of course the losses are driven primarily by where the events occurred. And of course what's happened in this country is people have really been moving into a high risk area along coastal areas, in particular with high property values. And in some cases certainly compromising natural habitat that is normally a protective device for properties. I did put this slide up. It's a September slide from the Department of Homeland Security about the National Flood Insurance Program. And again, I realize the numbers are maybe a little hard to read. But what you'll see here is the flood insurance program has about 5.6 million homes insured in this country. The insurance industry does not insure residential flood loss. It's entirely a federal program. And the federal program is heavily concentrated in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana if you look at the numbers. But of course you see in New Jersey about 230,000 insured properties and in New York 164,000 insured properties. So from the perspective, most people's perspective you probably would find that in the New York, New Jersey area that it was under insured for flood loss even though this is clearly a major flood event. The flood losses, again the number here, this $7.5 billion is really an estimate since I don't believe the National Flood Insurance Program has actually released any numbers about this. So take it as a range. There was a public statement made by one flood official that what they were likely to need in the way of additional borrowing was $6 to $12 billion over and above the borrowing that they currently have. And I'll come back to that. I also wanted to point out the disaster assistance declarations made in this country and again a trend line. 2011 and 2010 were particularly notable as the highest disaster declarations made by a president in history. And as noted on this slide, the average over this period of time, this is 1953 to 2012, is 35 a year. But we haven't had 35 or fewer since 1995. So really the trend is fairly significant increase in disaster assistance funded by policy holders, by taxpayers. Federal Disaster Aid, an earlier slide I had noted that the governors of New York and New Jersey in particular, Connecticut here and I gather there was an editorial op-ed in today's Washington Post by them asking the Congress to move more expeditiously on disaster assistance. So what I've tried to provide here was some sense of what they requested, which is broken down by immediate disaster relief and recovery versus long term planning and resilience for the communities. And the president's request is $60.4 billion, which is really what's pending before both the House and the Senate. And again that has broken down at about $47 billion in repair and recovery and $13 billion for a future looking forward looking mitigation efforts that the administration believes are important. And we certainly would agree with that. I told Carol that I would conclude with some points of things that in our industry we believe would be important to undertake either at the state or the federal level as part of an effort to build more resilient communities as well as have a forward looking, not just a retrospective looking perspective on this. So let me highlight a couple of points here and perhaps not all of these and Carol if it's okay we can come back to these if that would be appropriate. The first is building codes. The building codes are generally dealt with at the local level. There is pending in the House and I believe Senator Menendez has introduced or will be introducing in the Senate. They proposal to provide additional disaster assistance for communities that adopt building codes meeting certain minimum standards. So it's really a carrot if you will that would help improve building codes. Unfortunately the building codes are fairly inconsistent along the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Coast and do not fully reflect the extreme weather events. The second thing we would say is risk based pricing. Insurance should in fact reflect risk, the risk assessment. The National Flood Insurance Program does not statutorily reflect the risk that it has. So that program in particular but we would say the same would be true at the local level for the private insurance sector. The other point I would make, another point I would make here is this point about using nature. We have an excellent working relationship with a lot of environmental groups and they point out strongly that nature does in fact provide a natural mitigation factor for disaster losses. Notably the kinds of losses we just saw where you have a significant storm surge element so from our perspective any programs that in fact will do more to enhance the use of natural habitat to protect properties and people would be important. There are several suggestions here about tax credits, revolving funds to help people deal with mitigation measures in their home. We've highlighted the Coastal Barrier Resources Act which was passed I think 26 or 27 years ago designed to protect natural habitat along our coast. It does tend to get compromised by exceptions being made in the statute by congressional decision. We think that's not a good idea and there's an opportunity in fact built into the supplemental disaster request an opportunity to fund both land acquisition and restoration of natural habitat for this purpose. The last thing that I would point out here, we often interact with NOAA on its programs and one of the things that is consistently and sorely needed is additional funding for both earth and remote sensing. Satellites have gotten old, they are likely to not really truly reflect the kind of exposure that we have and if indeed these programs are not fully funded, we the insurance industry will not benefit from the value that comes from government information and insights about climate and weather. And the last, my last slide is this one, the National Traffic Safety Board investigates airline crashes and they do a terrific job of one thing and that is looking at these crashes to try and determine what the factors were associated with a crash so that going forward those can be addressed so that we have improved airline safety. It certainly occurs to me that something like that where you have an integrated multidisciplinary look at these natural disasters including local officials, home builders, people from the emergency response community, people from the insurance industry, certainly all levels of government taking a look at these disasters and trying to come up with a clear sense of what could be improved and what the problems were. So I have routinely begun suggesting that the National Traffic Safety Board is a prototype that could be used in the disaster area. So thank you very much. I look forward to participating in the question and answer which I think follows the three presentations. Great. Thank you very, very much Frank. And as we usually do, we will open it up for your discussion after we hear from all of our speakers. Until we started to work on this briefing, I had not had the opportunity to meet our next speaker, Lundin Patton, who is the Chief Climate Product Officer with the Zurich Insurance Group. Although I have known about Zurich for a long time and certainly her involvement on behalf of the company in many areas with regard to looking at climate and disaster events and the significance of those and what again does this mean. Of course, one of the things that you also saw in terms of Frank's slides and that I think is so important for us to realize that as we look at what happens here, I think that many of us are also very much aware of what happens globally in terms of the increased numbers of weather disasters and extreme weather events. And in fact, one of the things that is also always so interesting to me is the very interconnectedness of the insurance and reinsurance industries globally. It is not just based, a company that is based here or whatever, but these investments are indeed global in terms of whether their name is Zurich or Munich or Swiss or indeed other reinsurance companies that may indeed be headquartered here in this country. So everyone has huge stakes in terms of what is happening again everywhere and therefore I am very, very glad to introduce Lundin Patton with Zurich Insurance Group. Thank you very much for taking the time out to be here with us to talk about what I will call the climate resilience gap. Fundamentally, I think that Frank has done an excellent job in terms of outlining the magnitude of impacts that are affecting society at large. But those impacts, oh did you not, he's got the wrong, the impacts that are affecting society are definitely affecting our economic stability in both the short term and the long term. And what I want to talk about today is what the role of insurance is from a social perspective in terms of not only being there to pay claims to put people back into the place where they were prior to loss as much as possible, consistent with our contracts. But also, how important insurance is in the context of participating in helping society and local economies to recover from natural disasters. And I want to share with you some specific analysis that has been done in that context which proves out after looking at thousands of losses globally in the natural disaster context. How having an insured rather than having an uninsured loss results in more stability to gross domestic product over multi-decadent periods. This is the kind of information that I think is important and has been missing somewhat from the dialogue as we all talk about these almost unfathomable numbers in terms of the magnitudes of losses that are presented. And I apologize that somehow the pictures aren't up here that go with it. But many of you have seen a series of pictures that have come out of these losses with flooded taxi cabs and the like. But I think what's really important in times of trying to put the losses which Frank so readily reviewed in context is understanding, even though we've got sort of changing numbers over time, that these affect percentages of local gross domestic product. So these are not just socially disruptive, these are remarkably economically disruptive activities. And what we need to figure out is how we close this climate resilience gap. Scientists are indicating that there is a significant potential that we will have a change in weather patterns. It is also quite clear that we have lost what scientists call stationarity. In other words, historical views of the hydrologic cycle are no longer predictive of future views of the hydrologic cycle. And why do you care about that? You care about that because the hydrologic cycle is what forms the basis of the environment in which you exist every day. It determines when it rains, it determines what kind of wind speeds and patterns you have. It determines literally the heat, the cold, the environment in which you live. These are things which we all depend upon. And in fact, these are conditions upon which we base our economic investment patterns. And the majority of our historical economic investment patterns are based on assumptions of stationarity. They are based on the assumption that prior weather patterns reflect future weather patterns. And what we have today is a series of assets which have value and have social and economically assigned values, which are becoming less and less appropriate in their resilience standard given the changing weather patterns which we face. So what I want to talk about and focus on in this discussion is how do we close that resilience gap and what is the role of insurance in that context so that we can avoid multiple percentage impacts over multiple events in a year to GDPs of both local and national economies. So how do we get from the current state of our resilience of existing assets which are in place to something that is a resilient state? I think that Frank has certainly outlined the majority of these items that are included. But you have to consider we have increasing frequency or severity of climatic events. We need building zones, building codes in regional zones to reflect changing hydrologic cycles. We need them to be cognizant of given the earn-out life or the capital investment life of specific assets, the stressors, the environmental stressors to which they are being exposed, and those building codes should go hand in hand. So consistent with what Frank has made as a recommendation, you need public-private partnerships and you need multidisciplinary analytics of local regional conditions. One size does not fit all. As ASCE remarkably demonstrated in 2009 in their report card assessment, we have a slight infrastructure deficit, which they assessed at several trillion dollars. Their report speaks for itself, but I would observe that given that we have limited funds socially, that as we begin to evaluate how we upgrade, reinvest, and develop new infrastructure, that we include the concept of the loss of stationarity directly into those analytics and assure that if we are building a piece of infrastructure which is designed to last 25, 30, 50, 70 years, that we include climatic models in that analytic so that we are assured that it will last its full, useful life in a manner that's consistent with the economic investment pattern which is predicated on the capital investment. So in other words, you don't want to assume that something's in the last 30 years only to have it blown away in 10. And realistically, I think what we've seen is that if you're in a 100-year floodplain, it's a 26% chance that during that period of time that you'll have a flood impact to that asset. That's not exactly I think what your average investor is thinking about if they're in a 100-year floodplain. So we have a tremendous opportunity. I think we need to, as we go forward, and I think as Frank has suggested, come to an agreement about what we define as resilience and how we're going to proceed in those multi-professional integrated analytics. I offer up here an IPCC definition. There are a multitude of other definitions. I would also commend you to a recent report released by the IFC and the World Bank and the IEG evaluating the IFC's work in which they have defined standards for review of climatic investment screening. It's worth a look. But to bridge that climate resilience gap, I think we're going to need to invest in adaptation. We need to incentivize risk reduction. And this is the big trick because if you have assets which are now not sufficiently resilient to the physical forces to which they're exposed, somebody's going to have to pay the difference to get them upgraded. And that is the public policy challenge. This is going to require a long, hard look at risk-based land use management. And it's going to have to foster some sort of long-term investment management activities. But to that end, I think I have a piece of information to share with you courtesy of the Bank of International Settlements in which they did a recent study which looked at approximately 21,000 natural catastrophe events globally. This was released December 5th. This particular report looked at economic impacts of natural disasters in economies which were insured, uninsured, and underinsured and looked at those impacts and they were stunning. Most of us in the insurance industry believe at our core that insurance serves a tremendously valuable social function in stabilizing and pooling risks but also stabilizing economic impacts both in the short term and in the long term. And this study actually proves this out. The abstract, and I'm quoting directly from the paper itself, reads, Our main results are that major natural catastrophes have a large and significant negative effects on economic activity both on impact and over the long run. However, it is mainly the uninsured losses that drive the subsequent macroeconomic cost whereas sufficiently insured events are inconsequential in terms of foregone output. That is a powerful position taking. And I think it's something that ought to be evaluated by anybody who's interested in this area. The natural catastrophes that were reviewed in this particular study looked at 21,763 events. The source of the data was Munich Reek in the Natcat service and the information is fully available and transparent in that analytic. You will also note at the very front portion of the study itself they clearly show that the insurance industry did not pay for because it's really interesting because this was a regulator. We didn't pay for nor did any of the associations pay for any of this analysis and I think that given the status of the BIS they were very concerned at assuring everyone that this was an independent analysis. And I spoke directly to Getz von Peter who was one of the primary authors and he was really nervous about that. So I think it's important to understand where the source of the data is but the main figure in terms of the results of the analytic is figure four in which they looked at the impact of growth if you have uninsured losses over a multi-decadent period on GDP. These are the percentage in the vertical axis and years in the horizontal axis. And there's a cumulative effect up in the right hand corner, top line, right hand graph is the cumulative effect of uninsured losses on GDP on a decadent basis. In other words, you don't recover. And this is consistent with the experience that each of us has in understanding what happens when natural disasters hit emerging markets that don't have sufficiently resilient assets. By contrast, impacts on growth if you are fully insured assets indicate that in the short run you have a very static GDP you have an opportunity to increase and then you get your up and down along the way. But the cumulative effect of a fully insured environment is economic stability. And I would argue that we are much better off socially and economically to remain in a condition where we are climatically appropriately resilient and that we should evaluate how we structure our public policy in this context to assure that we allow insurance to be deployed in a way so that we can perform our quality social role to that end. So with that, that's the conclusion of my comments. Thank you. We will now turn to our final panelist, Cynthia McHale, who is the director of the insurance program with CERES. EESI has been privileged to work numerous times with CERES on sustainability and climate issues. They do so much forward-looking work with the corporate and investment communities and in terms of providing very solid information to, I think, the public and to, again, the investor and corporate companies as they look at ways to really think about climate, look at a number of environmental, look at a number of energy issues as we all think about what does sustainability mean because, obviously, sustainability is important in terms of economic sustainability as well as environmental sustainability. Cynthia? Thank you very much, Carol. And also, I would like to especially thank Frank and Lindeen for being here today and representing the insurance industry. I speak often with both of them, and I can assure you they are incredible leaders within this sector. And I'm just thrilled to have them here today speaking about what they know so much about. I'm going to be talking about protecting the U.S. against future economic losses from extreme weather. Recent extreme weather catastrophes are beginning to show us that climate change will be the defining issue of this century. When averages change, extremes usually change with them. A warming climate loads the dice for extreme weather. That's especially true for the United States. According to a recent Munich study report, and I'm quoting this, nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America. Climate change is impacting heat waves, drought, heavy precipitation events, and in the long run, most likely hurricane intensity. This map depicts some of what we have seen over the past, just the past two years. So 2011, 2012. And it's all across the nation. It's not just on our coasts or not just in Tornado Alley. We've had devastating wildfires in the southern plains and in the western states due to record high temperatures and low levels of rain and precipitation. We've had back-to-back droughts in 2011 and 2012 that have caused over 30 billion in crop losses and larger impacts on global food supplies. And then, of course, we've got now Hurricane Sandy, the second or third largest hurricane to ever hit the United States. Weather catastrophes are costing U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. The U.S. insurance sector, without a doubt, is at economic ground zero for direct exposure to extreme weather events, as well as potential climate liability lawsuits and risks to insurers' vast investment portfolios. However, and I think this is really a critical point that I want to make, total economic losses from extreme weather events are two, three, or four times the insured losses. So what we see here on this chart here is the blue line takes us up to the total loss, which, as you can see, in every year is way above the portion there that's insured. The 2012 is an estimate. We don't yet know exactly what the insured portion will be. Some are probably between 20 and 30 billion. The total economic losses could be upwards of $100 billion. So huge losses are being absorbed by our federal government, as well as by businesses due to property damage, as well as business interruption, individuals due to damages to their homes and job loss, and local governments due to state-run residual insurance pools, as well as infrastructure losses. Insured losses from Hurricane Sandy are looking to be over $20 billion, but again, the economic losses will be many times that. The difference will be paid in part by programs such as the National Flood Insurance Program, the state-run residual markets that I just mentioned, but our federal and state governments will be paying the bulk of that tab, that is, the taxpayers. I'd like to talk, please, a little bit about losses under alternative climate change scenarios. Here we have an example for Florida, where the costs of extreme weather impacts are directly related to the magnitude of global warming, and nationwide may be between 5 and 10% of GDP in the long run. Therefore, an effective response to climate change must combine adaptation to manage the unavoidable, as well as mitigation to avoid the unmanageable or unimaginable. In other words, it's imperative that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced while resiliency efforts are also being accelerated. A recent influential study led by Swissry and others, referred to as the Economics of Climate Adaptation or ECA, makes clear that the need for both adaptation planning and greenhouse gas reduction is urgent and the benefits are compelling. Despite significant uncertainty today about the potential effects of global warming on local weather patterns, there is enough understanding for us to move forward with strategically targeted investments in building resiliency. That much is clear. The ECA report, though, also provides a sobering reminder, and I quote, adaptation, no matter how well designed, cannot be a substitute for action to reduce carbon emissions and slow the rate of global warming. The insurance industry, without a doubt, is uniquely positioned to influence society in reducing risks. Insurers have been influential, for example, in requiring smoke detectors in homes and the use of seat belts in cars. I see climate as an analogous risk. The insurance sector has much to offer and much at stake in helping government and markets to accelerate solutions to better predict and prevent losses from climate change. In our recent series report, Stormy Future for the Property Casualty Insurance Sector, The Growing Costs and Risks of Extreme Weather Events, we lay out a number or a set of recommendations for the insurance sector, many of which have been touched on today by Frank as well as Lindean, so I'll run through these fairly quickly. First, insurers need to boost their understanding of their risk exposure and potential losses based on new and emerging weather patterns, not on historical data. We've turned an inflection point here. Things have changed around us. Second, insurers should actively support stronger research on national and regional forecasting of future weather and catastrophe programs or patterns. There is an acute need to advance our understanding at sea level rise at a more granular or local level, as well as the impacts of warming temperatures on the frequency and severity of thunderstorms, hail storms and tornadoes, of which frankly very little is known today. Third, insurers should increase their public engagement and climate change resiliency. There's a need for strong action. For example, their loss management expertise can help inform better land use planning, infrastructure design and building codes in critically exposed regions. Fourth, insurers should be promoting stronger climate risk awareness amongst their customers. This includes providing products and services to help businesses and individuals reduce their risks. Clearly this is a win-win. Customers reduce their losses as well as the insurance sector. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly from my vantage point and Siri's vantage point, insurers need to be vocal advocates for strong climate policies that will reduce carbon pollution that is causing climate change in the first place. Our Stormy Future report also lays out a set of recommendations for state insurance regulators, which you can see there and are detailed in the report. We have a few out on the table and they're also on our Siri's website. Clearly there is also a critical role for the federal government. Insurance works best when it's part of an overarching climate resiliency framework that seeks to prevent losses from happening and to reduce the impact of those events that are truly catastrophic. Clearly there is a very critical role for our federal government and Congress in boosting our resiliency to extreme weather. Our first lines of defense should be to prevent and reduce risks by setting stronger building codes, creating incentives or restrictions on building in hazardous areas, and planning defensive infrastructure such as road elevations. Secondly, the federal government and Congress should link federal recovery assistance to climate resiliency planning. As part of any congressional disaster aid bill, there should be crystal clear language. No checks will be mailed without local assurances that resiliency measures are being pursued. And finally, there is a reason we're holding this briefing in D.C. The broader, well-documented and far-reaching impacts of climate change will only be addressed through thoughtful, bipartisan policy initiatives passed by the U.S. Congress. Thank you. I want to thank all of our panelists. Very, very thoughtful discussion and presentation of all of the issues that are confronting us. And let's open it up for your questions or comments. And if you could please identify yourself, please, when you make your comment or question. Go ahead. And of course we visit members of Congress and the Senate to encourage them to enact a tax on carbon emissions, a carbon tax. We, in our various visits, we have observed that most of the legislators to whom we speak don't get many visits from the insurance company about prevention of climate change and, in fact, one senator has told us it's been the other way around. We're talking to our State Commissioner about more transparency on the part of the insurance industry in regard to risks to insurance posed by climate. So, and as I see it, the insurance industry, climate change could be catastrophic for the industry itself with less insurance property, more price sensitivity due to declining wealth, and finally to less predictability due to the changing hydrological patterns that Levine Patton mentioned. So, if that is true, if there is such great risk to the insurance industry itself, why hasn't the insurance industry been all over Congress from a prevention point of view? Republicans and Democrats alike? I'll take a first shot at that. A couple of things. The series to its credit took the initiative with State Insurance Commissioners, which we supported, to get better disclosure from insurance companies about their climate-related exposure. That was adopted, I think, even recently, this November by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners as part of their financial examination process that companies will be asked about their climate risk. And there's a series of very specific questions. The states of New York, California, and Washington, Washington State, adopted earlier this year a disclosure requirement related to climate, and I believe series has been retained to evaluate and assess that information, so Cynthia may be able to comment on that. And we, our community, the reinsurance community does think that that kind of disclosure will bring more attention and an understanding of that. Another question about where is the insurance industry on this, and I do get this question from time to time because it's a natural question if our concern is about the cost associated with extreme events. Should we focus on the causes as well as the consequences of these extreme events? The business model of insurance is largely one of aggregating large amounts of data from individual losses and trending it forward. There are a few companies in our industry that several have been mentioned, including Zurich, by the way, Swiss Re, Munich Re, they're fairly progressive about saying that the industry ought to address climate risk as in looking at the causes of climate risk, carbon emissions or other indices. In the broader industry, however, it uses catastrophe modeling as part of its way of assessing exposure and helping establish the prices that it recommends to state commissioners for adoption and the factor associated with climate, whatever that interpretation means, is relatively small when you look at the broader factors of where properties are built, the value of properties, the cost to repair properties, tends to dwarf whatever that indicator is of climate. So the catastrophe modeling companies that I referenced earlier in one of my slides do in fact have scientists that seek to try and evaluate the current state of science as it relates to climate risk and incorporate it in this catastrophe modeling, but it's a small signal compared with the overriding signal of where homes are being built and whether or not they're being built to protect. So the industry last comment I make, the industry tends to focus on the consequences of that, so the industry focuses on adaptation, which you will see in the recommendations that I've made rather than on looking at energy policy, and part of that may be the controversy around the politics around energy policy where a clear solution to that hasn't really, a consensus about that really hasn't emerged. Ladee? I'll comment very briefly to say that I think as Frank noted, there are a few companies who have been involved, but primarily looking at adaptation issues. I think one of the challenges is that there are nuanced impacts that a lot of the public don't understand with respect to insurance itself. Insurance is part of the overall economy, I think that's been emphasized, but we're integrated into its existing structure, and as Frank noted, there are a lot of politics that go on with changing that structure fundamentally. There are a lot of options and a lot of choices to be made, but the challenge from a leveraged perspective for insurers is that there's what I'll call temporal dissonance between the reality of climate change and the structure of our financial instruments, which is exactly the same we define in banks and lenders. So if the primary structure that we have is a single-year renewable policy, we are effectively addressing the impacts of climate change through our rating and modeling processes, as Frank has said. That doesn't necessarily always address the longer term issue in terms of a multi-decadent impact. We certainly do our job in terms of managing our instruments and sending risk-based price signals to society, but that isn't necessarily doing, I think, what you're talking about, which is trying to fill the governance gap in effect. We are part of society, we communicate in that context, and we provide expert information as insurers to policymakers who are having to make some pretty tough decisions, as well as public and other stakeholders. And I think it's a dialogue that we have to continue in, and we're trying to play that role, but it may not always be obvious how we're doing it. Great. Thanks. And I would just mention that it's one of the reasons why we wanted to be sure and have this briefing to really help that whole dialogue begin in a very, very serious way. Carol, can I just add something to the comment? Because it's an interesting question and a dilemma, I think, for the industry. The first is, if Congress wants to focus on its own insurance company, the National Flood Insurance Program, and its assessment of climate risk and incorporate that, that would be a very constructive thing to do and certainly a leadership role for the Congress Homeland Security National Flood Insurance Program. My recollection is that in the last year of the Bush administration, a report was commissioned looking at climate risk in the flood program, which has yet to be released. I have no reason to know why it hasn't been released, but there's an opportunity where the government has within its own administrative process an opportunity to address climate risk. I do think that storms like Sandy, or any of these storms, really are an opportunity for our industry to learn. So if you say, why is the industry doing something about climate? Well, the industry instead will look at something like storm surge and say, okay, if you have a rising sea level as a result of a warmer climate, what's the storm surge impact likely to be? Well, Sandy is a great learning opportunity for our industry and local officials to look at those kinds of indices of climate change that have a practical impact on where people live and what they get charged for insurance, or in our case, reinsurance to insurance companies. So there are learning opportunities here that is part of the climate discussion. The industry just doesn't tend to go into the energy policy aspect of all that, and that is, well, what do you do about carbon emissions and what solution is there to that? Okay, Cynthia, a quick comment? Thank you, Carol. Yeah, a quick follow-up to Lindy's comment too about the timing. I think it's really important that we work to make sure that our communities remain insurable, that insurance stays active in those markets. I know what we saw following Hurricane Andrew in Florida was sincerely a mass exodus from the state. So while it's true that insurers have, you know, essentially one-year contracts in place, the response following a catastrophe to then pull out because it's no longer deemed an attractive market is not the right strategy in terms of the best interests of this insurance sector because it means their market's contracted, nor is it, as Lindy pointed out in the study, the BSI study, in the best interests of society to not have active private insurance markets. Great. Go ahead. I'm sorry if I can add something else to what Cynthia has said. When the National Flood Insurance Program was reauthorized in June or July of this year, I included provisions which we supported for the National Flood Insurance Program to assess laying off risk into the private reinsurance market. So Cynthia's point is well taken about Florida and some of the large national insurance companies being concerned about their exposure to loss in a state at such high risk as Florida. But I can tell you, in the reinsurance sector, our sector actually wants to write flood coverage, whether it's from the National Flood Insurance Program or from the private sector. It diversifies the risk that our companies write away from just wind coverage. We would write more earthquake coverage. So our sector, which is the sector that tends to get the heaviest load, if you will, from Contashville losses, is in fact looking to expand its risk opportunities and writing risk in these areas. Okay. Joe. Do you want to identify yourself, Joe? No, Joe Browner. And one other thing, Joe, we'll start with everybody. But I think that everything you all have said and assumed about the relationship with environmental values, resilient nature, and how that relates to development and insurance is a fantasy. I mean, anyone who objectively looks at our Everglades policy can see that whether we're putting in 4 billion, 8 billion, or 30 billion into Everglades restoration, the core of engineers with the support of federal and state politicians are actually making urban South Florida less resilient, are supporting strategies to eliminate the remaining buffering marshlands. The environmental community goes along with it because a tiny fraction of the money will actually help some of the natural area. And so they won't interfere with what turns into a big portfolio project to expand development at the cost of resilience and at the cost of greatly increased risk for urban society. If in our most endangered ecosystem, in one of our most highly visible societies next to us, what we're actually doing is making the society more at risk by providing less resilience for nature and only token of protection for national interests. And at the same time, the local government, after Andrew's code enforcement, oh my gosh, if you rebuilt, you were going to have to rebuild high enough, because in three years the county commission has voted that people would rebuild high to turn all those spaces into apartments. The reality of what goes on in the ground in risk areas is so far removed from the ideal that's necessary to make what you say work. I think there's a need for a real rethinking that most of our impulses, political impulses, are pushing things in the wrong direction. Can I comment? I didn't hear a question in there, but I'd like to comment if I could. As Cynthia said, it's part of the reason why many insurance companies do not certainly want to increase their insurance in the state of Florida. The state of Florida has good building codes, very good building codes, and yet that has fostered development in higher risk areas. The problem that we have I think in that area and a lot of other areas of the country is the built environment, as opposed to the opportunity presented in a sandy kind of situation to rethink whether or not you just go in and rebuild or you pay people to rebuild. I know I'm talking about the flood insurance program maybe more than I should, but there's a program where you have repetitive losses, something like 1% or 2% of all the insured properties in the flood insurance program account for 30% of the losses in the national flood insurance program. I'd like to rethink whether or not we're encouraging building, not just by the flood program, or whether or not by suppressing insurance rates, I've made the point that about risk-based rates for insurance, it's really a signal for people about the consequences of the decisions they make about where they build, but states like Florida have a very... part of their economy is real estate, real estate development, real estate sales, and therefore you have, in our view, a concentration of risk in a state that's hard for the insurance market to insure because people don't want to pay at least what the industry would think of as being rates reflective of risk, including catastrophe risk. So I don't think I disagree with your point. You've called it a fantasy. I don't disagree with your point about the compromises in natural habitat. I think the point is where are opportunities to restore natural habitat or preserve natural habitat in a way that really protects properties. Vandeep, go ahead. Very quickly, and I know there's a bunch of other... Sorry, very quickly. I know there's a bunch of other questions too. A couple of comments. I think few of us in the industry have worked really hard to try to make recommendations consistent with those that Frank and I have made to suggest that integrated land use planning is critical. We've also been active proponents of what the industry and what a bunch of scientists call decision support analysis tools. These are typically tools which have been developed out of the intelligence arena. Their capacity is quite sophisticated to do integrated data analysis looking at multiple factor impacts to both natural resources and to building and I think there are a couple of very good exemplars where these have been used in particular to specific man-made disasters or the consequences of some particular man-made disasters. They have also been used in some specific applications to try to evaluate comparative cost benefit analysis for natural resource restoration as contrasted with gray infrastructure development and I would commend you to look at the study which has been done by one of Frank's members, Swiss Rea, along with Mackenzie through ECA and the energy company called Entergy which while it is not a transferable study in any way they looked at a way, a methodology for evaluating the costs and benefits for investing in resilience in the Gulf in a region where they were and how to prioritize particular types of investments given some specified factors about what they wanted to protect but in particular they were looking at land use policies and looking at options for restoration of natural resources so I think there is a lot of work to be done but there are some people who are working on specifically cost benefit analytics and decision support analysis tools and our industry I believe is actively involved in helping to improve those tools and needs to continue to do so to give public policy makers more tools with which to appropriately evaluate their options because I rethink right now, especially in a local context most of the people who are making land use decisions don't necessarily have access to the kind of data that I shared today and obviously no amount of insurance is ever going to make a bad risk a good risk it just doesn't it pools risks and it helps manage risks without question and it helps modulate impacts but it's not going to make something that's a bad risk good so we need to collaboratively figure out how to integrate an analysis and improve risks over time which is something that Frank has noted our industry has a really significant history in whether it's in property protection or worker safety I'll stop there could you identify yourself please two great comments one of them is related to the Sandy event which we knew were coming for more than a week well ahead of time yet I believe there's more than a quarter of a million automobiles that people left park in the area which ultimately ended up being total loss it kind of reflects stupidity that the insurance and the rest of society end up paying for you've got to stop doing that and people have to start listening to the weather to see what's coming we knew a storm surge was coming and yet they didn't take any simple mitigation driving the vehicle in land for a few miles but it easily prevented those great losses and the other thing is one of the crash supports shows a number of disaster declarations by the president and I'd offer you two that's a very poor benchmark for how bad events are because you know the first thing the drop of a hat now the governor is looking to shift the cost of that to the federal and they'll declare anything and call that a national event and it's not really measurable compared to the things that that's a changing standard reflects that increase and you know I would agree they're getting worse and there's probably more of them but the way the chart reflects the data they have a really strong bias to shift costs again from state governments to the federal government okay there was a question back here about non-insured assets and you've discussed access to information I think it was really easy to say that a lot of folks don't have that access to information and then we have the problem of application of that information to a national financial product where I'm confused here is it's my understanding that the re-insures have been used in climatic modeling for over a decade and I know that you can't perfectly map out this isn't a linear change in terms of what the but then you said today that it's off actually with respect to the insures only a small component of their catastrophic modeling there's a little bit of a disconnect there so I was just wondering is there still an information access issue between the re-insures and the insurers or is the problem that the insurers actually can't use the climatic modeling data because of local statutes we're familiar with the statute of North Carolina that actually bans the use of non-linear changes and then second to that could the integration of this information or the force use of this information at both the insurance level and then also the localities actually improve this issue of under-insured assets because if it's only an access issue then I think that's soft but if there's something else if the contention of climate is a big deal then maybe we can change that yeah sure the disconnect I think is really this the climate models that you're talking about are primarily government climate models the industry doesn't run climate models and the climate models tend to be spatial meaning very very large geographies and long term looking at 30, 40, 50 year or 100 year developments the business model the catastrophe models that insurance insurers and re-insurers rely upon of course tends to look at a financial product that's a one year financial product whether it's an insurance contract on your home or a re-insurance contract and of course very geographically narrow so the disconnect tends to be long term spatial climate models and the needs of an industry that's looking at narrow geographical points what these catastrophe models try to do though is to take the state of knowledge in the science storm surge sea level rise whatever it would be and incorporate that including looking at topographical information about local areas to try and assess what the risk is so I don't think there's a disconnect between insurers and re-insurers as much as it is the challenge of trying to stay on top of our understanding of of what's happening caused by climate change or caused by just changes in weather in conjunction with where where people live my point really before was climate whatever you think of as being a climate factor is just overwhelmed in this analysis by the fact that you've got an enormous amount of wealth built in high risk areas and in coastal areas and that and then you have costs associated with rebuilding that that tends to overwhelm whatever the climate risk factor is but it is not to suggest that insurers and re-insurers these cat modeling companies are not trying to assess the potential increase in storm in the Gulf Coast or in the Northeast or that kind of thing so it's in other words the consequences of climate change was really what the industry has to focus on to try and get a practical application of that information one just quick thing to add and Frank tell me if I'm incorrect here but my understanding is that and then I agree with you there's not a disconnect between the re-insurers and the insurers on this issue but that many of the perils that are related to changes in weather patterns and global warming such as droughts or wildfires for example those are I believe not modeled losses is that not true I mean so for example hurricanes are modeled events very much looked at and well understood by the sector the insurance sector but there are other perils that just today and historically have not been the subject of great scrutiny so there's an information gap there as well but tell me if I've missed something no well I think you're right if you let's take drought I mean largely the drought associated with what we've seen in the last couple of years in farming is really a private public partnership between the government and the industry with regard to crops so there's a federal crop insurance program run by the Department of Agriculture to my knowledge it's not modeled if you will in terms of pricing but the pricing is really determined by the government not by the private sector wildfires would be a different kind of thing I suspect wildfires taken into consideration as companies look at the exposure they have in areas known to have a wildfire risk but then again as we've seen in so many wildfires they're in areas that are lightly populated so it's not it's not the kind of overwhelming risk exposure that you'd have with hurricanes or floods I have a couple of comments that might be relevant I think what you're one of some of your question and comment points up that there is a hole in the science with respect to the quality and the ability to do downscaled models so what Frank was noting is that the primarily the climatic models not only are temporarily slightly different than what you need for natural catastrophe models but they're spatially different so if you have a climatic model which is focused on a 200 kilometer range it is not co-located with public policy decision taker authority so in other words it means nothing to them so if somebody is a local building planner and they're being asked should I approve and permit a particular development on a coast and all they have is something which says generally within a 250 kilometer range something might happen someday within the life of this building how are they going to prioritize decision taking with that piece of information against another piece of information that says that or asserts that this will result in X dollars of revenue without a concomitant sort of downscaled model that could be converted into an estimate of loss that will also accompany that economic development so that would be number one so I think we have a whole which scientists are desperately trying to fill at this point in terms of improving the downscaling of those climatic models so they are meaningful to decision takers secondly I think your question was is there more than just understanding the models as the problem more than models and I think the answer is absolutely I think that we have a series of laws and statutes and social structures which are formed as a result of history and as a result of series of social agreements and those clearly reflect certain expectations about the environment and as we live in the environment humans generally have managed to change that through land use development or other activities and but when we made those laws we've given the government especially in this country particular authorities to take action and specify that the basis upon which they can take decisions so while you could say that there are other factors at play I would suggest that there are opportunities some of which have been mentioned here with respect to NFIP some of which exist with respect to the agriculture bill in which there could be adjustments to statutory language which allowed or required decision taking to reflect some particularly amount of agreed science or certain aspects of that science which reflects climatic impacts or they could not but that is a public policy decision taking opportunity which I'm sure there are many people who are evaluating at this point but at this point in several cases I'd seen a series of published articles about FEMA's authorities statutory authorities in terms of responding and doing redevelopment and while there is an opportunity for someone to petition to ask for rebuilding to more than building codes that exist at the time of disaster the fallback position of the statute as I understand it is that rebuilding can only occur to the prior building code even if a building code was changed after the disaster unless a series of petitions are made to the head of FEMA to move up in those petitions that there is a specified class of values to doing more than the old rebuild and that's a significant process to follow so as I had said in my initial presentation there are some developments which are occurring on a global basis in which parties are suggesting like the World Bank and IFC climate screening criteria which might be helpful in evaluating public policy options for a multitude of people in terms of looking at our current statutory structures so I think that a combination of improving decision support analysis tools but also improving the science which helps do analytics or provide feed-in data in a way where the results of the science are co-extensive with the decision taking authority that's where I think we're going to get a little more action driven and a little more effort on the part of public policy makers and on the part of citizens that wise, cost-conscious and beneficial decisions are being made that are economically and ecologically protective Kay, right here I'm Chris Bear, I'm with HDR I'm really curious about it's kind of a too far question so first of all considering these increasing scale of damages coming up but as well the dramatic cooling that goes on of insurance I'm curious whether you think the price signal to individuals who may be wanting to take mitigation measures individual companies, communities individual persons if that price signal is enough to make those mitigation measures or if we've heard comments before if if the change in your insurance premium is just not high enough that you can sell an apartment so that's the first part the second part gets to the, I think what you're talking about the name in particular where there's a public value for insurance that certainly wouldn't be in your price signal to the insurer and if that that loss in public value is really the gap that we need to talk about I think your comments are right on point for me my experience is that in fact in some cases the price signal if the insured risk is absolutely aligned with the impact of risk reduction so if there are a one to one then the price signal is enough to incentivize individual action or corporate action for example but when the impacts of a particular event which trigger insurance are beyond that which is the scope of the insurance that's when you begin to have a challenge about that investment and I think the challenge that you have with natural disasters and with other types of climatic events whether they're full blown disasters or something in between is that not all of the impacts are insured nor are they all insurable and so insurance is in the business of protecting private assets that's what we do we evaluate them we assess them we mitigate those risks and we collect premium pool and pay out to return them to their prior condition but if what you're talking about is a disruption for example which involves infrastructure which is maybe privately managed but publicly owned it may or may not be fully insured it may be appropriate under the local government law and laws are different in different countries insurance is not insurance is this is probably beyond the scope of the discussion here there are certain ways that things are insured if it's public asset which are different than if they are a private asset but you're right that the price signal as the insured risk becomes a smaller and smaller component of the impacted loss the less sensitive the price the recipient of the price signal is and so when you begin to have less and less insured assets we have less and less leverage gets I think to this overall perception about where are we we're here we keep screaming we keep saying we need to invest in these resilience issues but much of the value of the resilience actions the capital investments which are necessary to improve our infrastructure to improve resilience in buildings will not be a one to one reduction in the risk of insurance in fact the value might be that you keep your economy going to get to work that you have gas stations that can give them gas for example that you're not underwater that you have a way to get water out of the space but that does not necessarily change the loss that would be impacting the insurance and only when the loss or the frequency of loss is changed in terms of magnitude or severe in terms of severity or frequency is there a way to send a reduced risk based price signal so some of the loss that people want to avoid are not insured components of the loss and this is why while insurance I believe is an incredibly important part of the puzzle it is not the only piece and we have to work collaboratively can I add something to that to Lindy's point if I can just supplement that if you looked at the slides that I put up there were a couple of suggestions in there about tax credits for mitigation measures because as you suggest and as Lindy has pointed out the insurance premium may be so out of line with the cost associated with the retrofit of a home or whatever that might be so we've suggested to look at tax credits there was a suggestion about some sort of revolving funds so maybe community grants where there would be revolving funds available for people to in fact mitigate that but clearly a lot of this has to happen at the community level or the county level whatever the local level of government is with building codes that in fact reflect not just the extreme weather risk that we may have in that community but what the assessment of the community is about its future risk so clearly there are some community based things that have to be done that are different than the modest incentive that a reduction in your insurance premium is going to be for hundreds or thousands of dollars of retrofit kinds of features but it's a good point that we've all taken. Okay, the two last questions in the back and then up here. Can you identify yourself? Yeah, I'm Collin Wellingham I represent a group of 44 mayors on the Mississippi River in the whole 10 states so my funds to Mr. Nutter's comment is now my mayors some of them in the last 400 days have experienced a record a record flood and a record hurricane all of them just over a year one mayor who's on my executive committee the mayor of Adalia, Louisiana the economy of his town was almost completely destroyed between right now and last Thanksgiving just because of the drought everything has been happening to his town 20% of his revenue comes from a energy plant that is on the Mississippi River it's insured they have tried to do things that are adapting the plant to these climatic changes they see this they see the future they can see what's coming they're making changes and spending money the insurance components the instruments of that plant at all even in response to the changes they are making to the infrastructure you've all already answered that very well already so that's really not my question my question is what's the best way for a mayor either singularly or collectively as a large group to work with the insurance industry to help create incentives to help create instruments that are more responsive to the money that mayors are spending to make their infrastructure more adaptive they would really like to see incentives that they can take to their city councils that they can take to their chambers of commerce to say look let's not develop in that area let's actually increase the amount of wetland that's there because it will decrease the amount of damage we suffer from flood it will create a buffer zone that's the immediate economic return on that decision there isn't one actually the immediate return is a cost so if there was a return on that decision like that it would go a long way they'd like to work with the insurance industry to try to make that happen a bunch of how it is a good question it's a hard question my first advice would be go talk to the Missouri Insurance Company and get a more responsive insurer to your needs there clearly are insurance companies that focus on loss reduction as part of their business model a key part of their business model obviously I don't know who this community or any of these communities are specifically insured with but in that specific specific instance perhaps whether it's an insurance broker or an insurance company that really does focus on hazard mitigation as a key part of its business model would be my practical advice the second would be the industry has lots of players in it there are thousands of insurance companies there are obviously some major insurance companies probably the better thing to say is to really to talk with the insurance community that really serves the states or local communities you have there and see if we can't specifically pull together some sort of task force that really does look at the local exposure and what would be the industry be responsive to state insurance departments tend to be also a key player in doing something like that so I think my answer would be I'd be happy to follow up with you to see if I can help facilitate a dialogue with the insurance community and I would offer that I, like Frank would be happy to talk to you about if there is a possibility but I'll make a couple of other observations which are not applicable and have not been done largely in the US although occasionally they are done these comments are applicable to experiences that I've had outside of the US where we have kind of bridged some of these resiliency gaps and community development gaps in most of those cases we have worked with local organizations who are familiar with the local regional activities and who recognize that there are resilience gaps in those contexts and we have worked with them to try to identify how, what actions need to be taken to change the way that current development patterns are moving forward and how we can use insurance and to be typically get banks in there at the same time because these are generally pilot projects but it allows us to share information with parties who are quite motivated because of whatever their NGO is focused on in some cases we've done this and water management in other cases we've done it with reducing deforestation but there are a multitude of examples and then you have someone who can take on a much broader educational role than we might necessarily as people who hold a bunch of information can do on a day to day basis in terms of implementation but I think there's, so there are some models are really beyond the scope of this briefing at this point but I can point you to them where there has been some success on the ground trying to share some information and having positive results in terms of getting what you call affinity programs put together which give value to local residents who actively participate in effectively hardening their environment and making their environment more resilient in most cases those residents are given choices about whether they purchase insurance or not, that's their choice but interestingly at least in the emerging market context most of them do choose to do that to improve asset accrual I'd like to add one other thing too and Frank alluded to this earlier about the National Association of Insurance Commissioners a mandatory climate risk disclosure survey that series, the organization I work with is currently in the process of reviewing so these surveys were completed by approximately 90% of all US insurance companies and I can tell you what we're seeing which is consistent with what we saw last year, this is the second year of this, that by far most US property casualty insurers don't yet have strong climate risk strategies in place they haven't yet thought through the products and services and the ways to really engage with communities on these issues now we have here real leaders in the industry and I don't want to do anything to take away from that because that's absolutely true but the industry is not yet speaking with one voice on this and it has not yet really stepped up fully to the challenge it is the largest industry in the world with power and resources and expertise and really we encourage and are pushing to see that happen so I think you're highlighting gaps others have highlighted those gaps and I just wanted to be clear on the record that that is the situation today and I would hope that in a future briefing that we would be able to bring forward some of the examples that have been done before last question a lot of building codes that are used I've talked about them I've got two related questions one is given all the expertise here why don't we see some representation of the insurers at the building code development hearings because they are a developed consensus process and I think your expertise would be valuable in addition to those views of the builders and the construction community and the insurers the second and even more important the big problem now we publish new building codes every three years and they do reflect the history in Florida and other national disasters the big problem now is the opposition at the local level to adopting the latest building codes that's coming from builders, realtors that community and we really could use the help of insurers in those local fights for adoption of the latest building codes but we really don't see insurers as part of those coalitions comment on that in terms of the latter one I would highlight the role that there's one organization in the industry called the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies which has taken a leadership role in seeking federal legislation that would provide incentives for states to adopt the building codes that your organization does develop and frankly we think that's a wonderful way to try and provide some incentives for states to do that I'm a little surprised to hear you say that you don't see the industry engage the Institute for Business and Home Safety that's headquartered in Tampa is an insurance industry funded organization I know they focus on building code and building code development but if you're not seeing them or you're not seeing insurance representatives that's unfortunate really ought to do something about that so I'm happy to talk with you afterwards and talk about how to make sure they are engaged great so hopefully we're all going to see a whole lot of work getting done moving forward in many different pieces of this puzzle clearly it's I think very clear the different kinds of partnerships and learning that needs to go forward as we try to really make a difference for thinking about how we address these problems that are confronting the country as a whole and I once again thank our panel very very much that was terrific and I also want to mention that the presentations and a video of the briefing will be available on EESI's website and so if you also have other questions please feel free to follow up with us at EESI we can connect you with the speakers so thank you very very much for being here and thank you again to our wonderful panel thanks