How AI and climate change are colliding to form an ESG megatrend
Artificial intelligence can help insurers, bankers and investors save profits by saving the planet, according to SXSW panellists.
In June two of the biggest insurers in the US pulled out of California. Thanks in large part to increasingly common and perilous wildfires, they deemed the property owned by America’s richest state not worth the risk.
And it’s not just California. Home insurers are pulling out of Florida and Louisiana too. One in ten Canadian homes are uninsurable due to flood risk. In Australia, that number will be 1 in 25 by 2030.
“We are at the intersection of two megatrends,” said John Blicq on a Tuesday panel at Sydney’s South by Southwest conference. “The first one being climate change, a problem for all of us we can’t deny, and the second one [AI] is a tool that could become a weapon to fight climate change.”
Those pressing words weren’t spoken by an utopian tech founder or a troubled scientist, but a banker. Blicq is National Australia Bank’s associate director of innovation.
