A Lesson From Hurricane Laura?

Although 2020 kept dishing out pain last week — the pandemic, the economic crisis, the protests and counter-protests on racism, our crazy politics and even wildfires and hurricanes — one event wasn’t as absolutely awful as it could have been.

It was still awful: Hurricane Laura caused billions of dollars of damage and killed 14 people in Louisiana and Texas. But the hurricane didn’t cause nearly as much damage as initially feared.

That suggests that people are starting to take the sorts of precautions that will be increasingly important as we have to adapt to the changing climate. Those precautionary principles also represent a key opportunity in front of the insurance industry: to go from indemnifying customers after a loss to helping them avoid those losses in the first place... continue reading >