The Insurance Industry's Brave Whistleblowers Have Nothing New to Say

💡 This is my fourth Climate Proof opinion column — where I’ll share editorials, news analysis, and hot takes. Did you miss the previous three articles? Read them HERE, HERE and HERE.

Questions? Thoughts on today’s column? Email me at [email protected]

Yesterday, an anonymous memo published by the non-profit Inside Track ricocheted around the internet, warning of a runaway industry seemingly hellbent on destroying the world.

And no, it wasn’t about AI.

This document instead expressed the concerns of an number of unnamed whistleblowers from across the UK and European re/insurance sectors. Their message was simple and frustratingly insubstantial: climate risks are bad, the insurance industry is not pricing them correctly, and this failure could catalyze a new financial crisis.

As an exhibition of false heroics, the memo has few parallels. Senior insurance executives “sounding the alarm” anonymously, adding little-to-nothing to the existing canon of detailed reports and analysis on climate risks? Where are the ground-shaking revelations? The disclosure of dark deeds and high skulduggery?

Nothing in this memo goes beyond what the European Commission’s own report on climate resilience said back in 2024, or what Allianz board member Günther Thallinger wrote earlier this year — under his own name, no less.