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Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. This week hurricanes and

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Speaker 1: Wall Street. Hurricane Milton has caused widespread devastation across Florida,

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Speaker 1: and that's just weeks after Hurricane Helene. This is an

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Speaker 1: example of compound climate events, one disaster hitting soon after another,

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Speaker 1: something that we've discussed on the podcast before. If you

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Speaker 1: miss that episode, we've linked it in the show notes.

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Speaker 1: Today we want to talk about what Wall Street is

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Speaker 1: doing in the middle of these natural disasters, hurricanes in particular.

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Speaker 1: There's a whole market of special financial instruments that can

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Speaker 1: help people who've lost their homes rebuild or make investors rich.

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Speaker 1: It all depends on the details. My colleague in London

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Speaker 1: got the has been reporting on this area. It includes

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Speaker 1: the kinds of insurance you're familiar with, and the growing

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Speaker 1: market for things like catastrophe bonds. And this is a

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Speaker 1: global story because Wall Street is selling these not just

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Speaker 1: to rich countries, but also climate vulnerable nations that are

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Speaker 1: desperate for any kind of help they can get. So

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Speaker 1: this is the first time we've tackled insurance on Zero.

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Speaker 1: And before we get into the bigger discussion, let's just

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Speaker 1: go over the basics. What is the easiest way to

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Speaker 1: understand the financial instrument that is insurance.

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Speaker 2: So there are risks in the world, whether it's a

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Speaker 2: natural catastrophe or a car accident. An insurance company essentially

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Speaker 2: wants to spread this risk across a whole lot of people,

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Speaker 2: So everybody pays a premium, and the insurance company's betting

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Speaker 2: that only a few people actually get in an accident

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Speaker 2: or have their house roof blown off, so they would

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Speaker 2: pay those claims. But ultimately the total amount they pay

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Speaker 2: out and claims will be less than the amount they

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Speaker 2: can collect from the premiums, so they will stand to

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Speaker 2: make a profit at the end of it.

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Speaker 1: Right, So if I had car insurance, and I don't

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Speaker 1: because I don't own a car, But if I had

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Speaker 1: car insurance, and say the probability of me getting into

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Speaker 1: an accident is one in twenty years, that means roughly

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Speaker 1: my premium would be one twentieth of the damage my

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Speaker 1: accident may cause. And so I'm paying that over twenty years,

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Speaker 1: and at some point I get into an accident, and

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Speaker 1: then fortunately I'm not paying that huge amount because I've

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Speaker 1: been paying the small amount all through my time, and

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Speaker 1: I am saved from that risk great, lovely to have insurance.

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Speaker 1: It sort of makes the world work better. But now,

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Speaker 1: what if suddenly we realize that there's a software glitch

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Speaker 1: that car makers have introduced, all kinds of cars are crashing,

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Speaker 1: and insurance companies aren't ready to make such large payouts.

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Speaker 2: Well, it means that the insurance company is on the

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Speaker 2: hook for a lot of money, much more than it anticipated,

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Speaker 2: and so they have different ways of dealing with this.

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Speaker 2: They buy insurance from other companies which are known as reinsurers,

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Speaker 2: and so that allows them to spread the risk of

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Speaker 2: this kind of calamity you're describing, which is sort of

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Speaker 2: a black sworn event which they weren't expecting, pass on

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Speaker 2: that risk off their balance sheets to some extent onto

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Speaker 2: other people willing to take on that risk.

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Speaker 1: And can the reinsurance be wrong and do they have

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Speaker 1: somebody to protect them?

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, all players in the insurance market are extremely risk averse,

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Speaker 2: even though risk is what they deal in. So even

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Speaker 2: reinsurers buy their own insurance, they buy it from companies

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Speaker 2: called retrocession, the retrocession industry, and that's how they pass

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Speaker 2: on some of their risk.

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Speaker 1: To other parties. Does this onion have it more or

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Speaker 1: less stops there. Okay, so insurers have insurers have insurers,

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Speaker 1: and that's about it. But all this year you've been

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Speaker 1: reporting on an instrument called a catastrophe bond, which is

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Speaker 1: a type of insurance instrument. And I've read those stories

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Speaker 1: with great interest because on the one hand, they could

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Speaker 1: really help people deal with climate catastrophes that we are

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Speaker 1: freezing increasingly. But on the other hand, you've been showing

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Speaker 1: how hedge funds are actually making a ton of money

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Speaker 1: from this instrument. Now we are watching the fallout from

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Speaker 1: Hurricane Milton, and it looks like catastrophe bonds could be

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Speaker 1: playing a role in how Tampa and Saint Petersburg and

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Speaker 1: those areas recover from this disaster. So let's start there.

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Speaker 1: What is a catastrophe bond and why is it different

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Speaker 1: from the types of insurance instruments that we've been talking about.

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Speaker 2: So regular insurance and the example of your car is

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Speaker 2: something that the risk is usually taken on by the insurer, right,

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Speaker 2: this goes on the balance sheet, and if you make

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Speaker 2: a cli, the money comes out of their balance sheet

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Speaker 2: to pay you. Well, there are events in the world

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Speaker 2: that are extremely large, very hard to predict, rare and

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Speaker 2: really black sworn events like a massive catastrophe that insurance

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Speaker 2: companies don't want on their balance sheets. It'll wreck their finances.

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Speaker 2: So what they want to do is they want to

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Speaker 2: pass that on to some other group of people who'd

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Speaker 2: be willing to take on the risk, and that group

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Speaker 2: is Wall Street. There are investors there who are much

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Speaker 2: more happy to take on risk as long as they

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Speaker 2: get a good return. A cat bond is the instrument

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Speaker 2: that allows insurance companies and sometimes governments to pass on

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Speaker 2: the risk of these very rare black sworn events to

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Speaker 2: Wall Street, to the capital markets.

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Speaker 1: And this is a more recent development in the insurance

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Speaker 1: industry than insurance as a whole.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: It is it think goes back to the early nineties,

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Speaker 2: and I think it was Hurricane Andrew that really sparked

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Speaker 2: an interest in this, where there were predictions by the

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Speaker 2: insurance companies that even if large hurricane, very large hurricane

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Speaker 2: would to hit the US, it wouldn't cripple them. In fact,

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Speaker 2: Hurricane Andrew did. The losses are much greater, and suddenly

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Speaker 2: these insurers realized they had to find a way to

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Speaker 2: pass on the risk of these catastrophic events to some

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Speaker 2: other party. And it ended up being Wall Street through

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Speaker 2: cat bonds.

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Speaker 1: And Hurricane Andrew hit Florida, and Florida of course even

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Speaker 1: today sort of dealing with the impacts of that insurance payout,

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Speaker 1: because getting insurance in Florida is getting harder and harder.

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Speaker 1: And now cat bonds themselves cover all kinds of events, right,

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Speaker 1: it's not just natural disasters, it's not just climate link disasters.

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Speaker 1: What other types of events does it cover?

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Speaker 2: Well, earthquakes, for one, that's one of the main large,

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Speaker 2: unpredictable events that cat bonds are used for. But there

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Speaker 2: are also catbonds that cover what are known as secondary perils,

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Speaker 2: things like floods and wildfires and storm surges. So you

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Speaker 2: do have capponds that cover these kinds of events, but

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Speaker 2: the market is increasingly shifting to these more rare, one

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Speaker 2: off Hurricane Katrina like events which caused a great deal

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Speaker 2: of damage but only occur occasionally.

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Speaker 1: While you use this term secondary peril, it feels a

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Speaker 1: little wrong to say a flood is a secondary event,

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Speaker 1: whereas what is the primary event? And why that distinction?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so originally hurricanes and earthquakes were called primary events

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Speaker 2: and all these other events were called secondary. Well, that

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Speaker 2: distinction has changed. I think even insurance companies no longer

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Speaker 2: refer to them as secondary perils because climate change is

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Speaker 2: engendered more flood events, wildfires, storm surges, and the industry

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Speaker 2: losses and the insurance for insurance companies has gone up

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Speaker 2: so much that they no longer consder them secondary.

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Speaker 1: So is the catbond just like normally insurance, say a

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Speaker 1: car insurance, where if I get a scratch or a crash,

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Speaker 1: I'll get the pay for whatever accident I get into.

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Speaker 2: Actually, cat ponds are highly specialized instruments, so some governments

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Speaker 2: issue them to protect themselves against very large natural disasters.

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Speaker 2: The way these work are through a particular parameter. So

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Speaker 2: if a country light jamaker is going to be hit

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Speaker 2: by a hurricane, the cat pond will have in the

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Speaker 2: documentation a particular parameter, in this case a pressure reading.

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Speaker 2: If that pressure reading is hit by a particular storm,

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Speaker 2: then the cat pond pays out. If it isn't, then

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Speaker 2: the government gets absolutely nothing. But the vast majority of

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Speaker 2: cat ponds in the market are dominated by US storms,

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Speaker 2: and these are structured somewhat differently. They have different thresholds,

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Speaker 2: but if there is a certain amount of damage then

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Speaker 2: the cat pond pays out a certain amount, and if

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Speaker 2: there's a higher level of damage, it pays out a

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Speaker 2: bit more. But there's no parameter involved. There's actual real

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Speaker 2: world damage has to be assessed for the issuer to

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Speaker 2: get some money.

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Speaker 1: So in the case of a parametric cat pond, it

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Speaker 1: will be paid out as soon as this particular parameter

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Speaker 1: is hit, whereas in the case of a threshold cat pond,

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Speaker 1: you actually have to wait for the damaged calculations to

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Speaker 1: come in and then make the payouts.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and that's exactly why developing countries really like parametric

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Speaker 2: based cat ponds. They don't have too much money in

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Speaker 2: their treasury, so when disaster hits they need to rebuild

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Speaker 2: quickly and they can get the money very quickly through

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Speaker 2: a parametric trigger because it's pretty easy to determine whether

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Speaker 2: the cat pond is going to pay out or not.

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Speaker 2: By comparison, the cat pond that say, would pay out

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Speaker 2: in the case of a big earthquake in California or

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Speaker 2: a hurricane in Florida is determined by claims of justice

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Speaker 2: actually going out in the field and calculating what the

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Speaker 2: real insured losses were. And it's on that basis that

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Speaker 2: will pay out. That process can take, if not weeks

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Speaker 2: or months, sometimes even years.

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Speaker 1: In general, the cat pond and is a higher risk,

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Speaker 1: higher reward strategy, and that's why Wall Street has been

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Speaker 1: interested in these instruments. In your reporting, you found that

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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, cat bonds proved to be the

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Speaker 1: most profitable strategy for hedge funds. Why was that so?

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Speaker 2: The cat bond is made up of two components. One is,

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Speaker 2: the investor gets a risk premium for taking on the

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Speaker 2: risk of these cataclysmic events, and they demand pretty high

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Speaker 2: rates of return and they're getting them. But on top

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Speaker 2: of that, they also get the current treasury rate, and

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Speaker 2: we know that interest rates have been high for a

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Speaker 2: long time, So when you put the two together, they've

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Speaker 2: been getting rates of up to twenty percent on their investments,

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Speaker 2: and as long as a catastrophe doesn't occur, they keep

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Speaker 2: getting this money in for three years.

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Speaker 1: So last year, the places that had cat bonds did

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Speaker 1: not suffer from as many climate catastrophes, and thus the

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Speaker 1: catboard investors made a ton of money this year with

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Speaker 1: Her Helene and Hurricane Milton. Should Wall Street be preparing

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Speaker 1: for major losses on their cat bonds instead.

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Speaker 2: So there's a significant amount of luck involved in cat

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Speaker 2: bond investments, and that's why they're a very niche market

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Speaker 2: and not for just about your ordinary investor. Now the

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Speaker 2: weight working out with Milton so far, it looks like

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Speaker 2: the estimated insured losses are anywhere from twenty billion to

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Speaker 2: sixty billion, which is much less than the one hundred

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Speaker 2: billion one hundred and seventy five billion that was forecast

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Speaker 2: for the top end. And this translates to a loss

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Speaker 2: of anyway from zero percent to four percent for cat

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Speaker 2: bond portfolio, which is not very much given that this

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Speaker 2: year catbond investors are bringing in about twelve and a

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Speaker 2: half thirteen percent. So if there are no further big

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Speaker 2: hurricanes and losses and they continue to get this rate

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Speaker 2: of return, they will end the year at roughly nine

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Speaker 2: percent up.

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Speaker 1: That feels kind of unfair. You have people suffering and

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Speaker 1: yet Wall Street is making money. I don't think it's

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Speaker 1: unfair because cat bonds are a specific instrument for very

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Speaker 1: rare black sworn events, and when they do occur, then

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Speaker 1: the investors will suffer tremendously. They could lose their entire capital.

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Speaker 1: You never have that to any other kind of fixed

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Speaker 1: income or bond investment. But here you have a very

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Speaker 1: high risk, high reward scenario. So for taking on this

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Speaker 1: crazy amount of risk, they demand high amounts of returns.

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Speaker 1: After the break, we talk about the use of CAT

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Speaker 1: bonds for poor countries and whether they can serve as

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Speaker 1: a solution to deal with climate link damages got them.

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Speaker 1: A separate story that you've been reporting on is Hurricane

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Speaker 1: Beryl's impact on Jamaica. It did not hit Jamaica directly,

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Speaker 1: It kind of risked passed, but it still caused the

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Speaker 1: worst damage that Jamaica has suffered from a hurricane, and

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Speaker 1: Jamaica has a CAT bond, but it did not trigger

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Speaker 1: the catbond, so the people lost and the investors won. Again,

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Speaker 1: what exactly.

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Speaker 2: Happened, Yeah, it's really important actually to point out that

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Speaker 2: most CAT bonds are issued in the developed world for

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Speaker 2: earthquakes and hurricanes and windstorms, but poorer countries are starting

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Speaker 2: to feel increased losses from climate related events, and some

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Speaker 2: are turning to CAT bonds as a possible solution. And

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Speaker 2: the World Bank has been promoting this as an instrument

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Speaker 2: for various countries.

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Speaker 1: And developing countries haven't turned to insurance yet because they

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Speaker 1: just can't afford the premiums. Right, It's sort of like

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Speaker 1: developing countries are uninsured whereas developed countries are insured.

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Speaker 2: That's right. I mean, big insurers barely have operations in

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Speaker 2: most of the poorer countries of the world, and when

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Speaker 2: it comes to climate risk, which is very uncertain, they're

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Speaker 2: even less inclined to provide insurance. And as you point out,

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Speaker 2: the insurance premiums are so high that a lot of

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Speaker 2: the governments there can't really afford them.

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Speaker 1: So how come Jamaica had a cat bond. Well, Jamaica

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Speaker 1: had a cat bond in twenty twenty one that was

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Speaker 1: issued by the World Bank, and it is when the

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Speaker 1: World Bank paid the premium that's why.

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Speaker 2: No, in this case, it was rich countries, including the US,

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Speaker 2: UK and Germany that helped to pay Jamaica's cat bond premium.

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Speaker 2: Jamaica renewed the cat bond earlier this year, but this

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Speaker 2: time they didn't get any help on the premium.

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Speaker 1: And Jamaica thought it was still worth paying the premium.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they did, because you know, if Jamaica got hit

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Speaker 2: by a really big hurricane, the cat bond would pay

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Speaker 2: out in their view, because it would potentially hit the threshold.

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Speaker 1: And then it did not and they didn't get to payout.

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Speaker 2: Now, as I said, a cat bond is almost an

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Speaker 2: all or nothing type of propersey. I mean, you can

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Speaker 2: get partial payouts, and in the case of the Jamaica

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Speaker 2: cat pond, if it had hit a certain lower threshold,

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Speaker 2: it would have gotten a thirty million or a fifty

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Speaker 2: million dollar payout instead of the total one hundred and

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Speaker 2: fifty million that the cat pond was issued for. But

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Speaker 2: in this case, the pressure reading that was taken from

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Speaker 2: the storm just missed what the threshold was, and so

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Speaker 2: there was no payout.

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Speaker 1: Did Jamaica get anything in insurance from a Hurricane Beryl,

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Speaker 1: given it was the worst that they have suffered.

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Speaker 2: Jamaica actually is a pretty pioneering country when it comes

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Speaker 2: to protecting itself from these kind of events. So they

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Speaker 2: built up a one point six billion dollar disaster financing

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Speaker 2: mechanism across cat bonds, parametric insurance, and various other types

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Speaker 2: of lifelines that they've procured. So overall, I think they

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Speaker 2: were actually quite well protected. But the cat bond was

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Speaker 2: very important part of it. One hundred and fifty million

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Speaker 2: dollars potential payout which they didn't get any from.

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Speaker 1: And so we've been talking about these many layers that

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Speaker 1: you can build to try and protect yourself from risk.

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Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, from the perspective

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Speaker 1: of Jamaica, it is really about protecting people. Do people

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Speaker 1: know what catbonds are and the fact that they didn't

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Speaker 1: trigger and they didn't get a payout, and what did

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Speaker 1: they feel about it?

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Speaker 2: Oh, we spoke to quite a few people on the

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Speaker 2: ground in Jamaica and nobody had any idea what a

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Speaker 2: catbond was. They had no idea they actually had this

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Speaker 2: potential protection that the government had bought for them with

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Speaker 2: taxpayer money. So when it was explained to them how

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Speaker 2: to work, they were sort of horrified that their homes

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Speaker 2: had been destroyed and their livelihoods had been hit, and

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Speaker 2: yet they had received no insurance payment even though there

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Speaker 2: was this instrument out there is supposed to protect them.

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Speaker 1: And our colleague Jim Wiz also spoke to Jamaica's leader

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Speaker 1: of opposition, Mark Golding about this.

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Speaker 3: Hello hello with mister Golden, Please.

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Speaker 1: Because after all, it is the leaders of the country

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Speaker 1: that are paying for this.

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Speaker 3: Cat pond and it sounded great and all that, you know,

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Speaker 3: providing the country with some coupler in the event of

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Speaker 3: a serious calamity. However, as we have discovered with Beryl,

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Speaker 3: you know, the country can be it's pretty hard by

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Speaker 3: a naturally that like hurricane and suffer extensive damage and

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Speaker 3: the relevant trigger of payment is not meant well.

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Speaker 1: Clearly the leaders are frustrated because they paid for something

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Speaker 1: and they didn't really benefit from it. Is Jamaica an

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Speaker 1: hurricane Berrow a singular example.

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Speaker 2: There have been other severe weather events where catbonds haven't

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Speaker 2: paid out. So for example, the Philippines, which relies what

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Speaker 2: have on these instruments to cut a cat bond and

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Speaker 2: it was hit by two or three typhoons recently and

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Speaker 2: it only got a partial payout and it decided not

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Speaker 2: to renew its World Bank cat bond. A more interesting

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Speaker 2: example occurred in twenty fourteen when Hurricane Ordeals smashed into Mexico.

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Speaker 2: Mexico had a cat pond. Now, the decision whether the

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Speaker 2: catbond would pay out is based on what the National

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Speaker 2: Hurricane Center measures, but in this case they didn't have

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Speaker 2: the best assessment of the pressure of Hurricane Ordeal.

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Speaker 1: And that's not surprising, like developing countries typically have far

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Speaker 1: fewer weather stations than developed countries do. There's a map

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Speaker 1: you can look at and it's sort of like fully

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Speaker 1: covered in rich countries and then very sparsely covered in

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Speaker 1: developing countries.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: Not only that I heard that in this case, because

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Speaker 2: they wanted to protect the weather stations on the ground,

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Speaker 2: some of the weather stations had been boarded up in

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Speaker 2: power it had protected from the oncoming hurricane, so there

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Speaker 2: was no pressure reading on the ground stations in certain cases.

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Speaker 2: So the National Hurricane Center then relied on a reading

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Speaker 2: taken by an amateur storm chaser called Josh Morgaman from

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Speaker 2: the US who happened to be in this part of

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Speaker 2: mexico chasing ordeal, and his contribution of the pressure reading

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Speaker 2: helped to determine that the threshold for the cat pond

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Speaker 2: trigger was not reached, and so he was actually really

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Speaker 2: livid about this later and wrote a letter to the

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Speaker 2: Los Angeles Times describing how he had unwittingly been responsible

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Speaker 2: for not allowing Mexico to make a claim on its

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Speaker 2: cat bond and how a pressure reading should not be

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Speaker 2: the measure of a hurricane's destructive force if you take.

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Speaker 1: A big step back. We've been talking about risk and

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Speaker 1: trying to insure against risk. Now, the way most insurance

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Speaker 1: instruments work is by risk across time or across geography,

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Speaker 1: and that allows for both the insurance companies to be

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Speaker 1: solvent and to make payments as they come through. Now, Avinsbrasod,

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Speaker 1: who is an economist from Barbados, told me that climate

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Speaker 1: change is an uninsurable risk because the main ways in

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Speaker 1: which you could pool this risk across time or geography

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Speaker 1: aren't working because across time we are heating the planet

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Speaker 1: and so the risks are going up, and across geographies, well,

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Speaker 1: climate change is happening everywhere at the same time, and

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Speaker 1: so he just calls climate change an uninsurable risk. Is

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Speaker 1: that right?

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Speaker 2: I'd say for the most part that's correct, because traditional

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Speaker 2: insurance would require people in poor countries paying a pretty

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Speaker 2: hefty premium to protect their homes and their livelihoods from

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Speaker 2: weather related calamity, and that doesn't really look like it's

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Speaker 2: practical reasonable. In coming years, there is the possibility of

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Speaker 2: parametric insurance, which also operates somewhat like a cat bond

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Speaker 2: in a more modest way, but even that only covers

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Speaker 2: a very small portion of potential losses. So in terms

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Speaker 2: of insurance, I think we're putting in a rock and

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Speaker 2: a hard place.

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Speaker 1: And yet rich countries want to find a way to

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Speaker 1: stretch an insurance instrument into really trying to help developing countries, right.

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Speaker 2: That's right. Two years ago an instrument called the Loss

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Speaker 2: and Damage Fund was put forward. It's a pool of

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Speaker 2: money from wealthy nations that supposedly will go to poorer

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Speaker 2: countries to help to alleviate the climate losses. That fund

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Speaker 2: doesn't have much traction yet.

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Speaker 1: It's got about seven hundred million dollars. And you know,

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Speaker 1: by any count climate damages for developing countries aren't the

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Speaker 1: tens of billions of dollars annually.

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Speaker 2: That's right. So there's been talk, we understand of perhaps

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Speaker 2: using that seven hundred million dollars to part completely pay

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Speaker 2: for premiums for a large cat bond to protect poorer

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Speaker 2: countries against climate losses.

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Speaker 1: In a way, it's something that has been tried in

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Speaker 1: the past before the Loss and Damage Instrument. Germany led

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Speaker 1: the creation of this thing called the Global Shield, which

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Speaker 1: set out that it's going to try and pay insurance

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Speaker 1: premiums for helping developing countries. The way rich countries are

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Speaker 1: seeing it is they pay a small amount and then

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Speaker 1: the private industry provides the larger payout. But this can

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Speaker 1: only go on for so long, right because eventually that

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Speaker 1: payout has to be met with the premiums that add

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Speaker 1: up to the payout. So if climate change is unensurable,

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Speaker 1: what is the way in which developing countries can deal

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Speaker 1: with climate damages?

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Speaker 2: Well, one of the most obvious ways is a loss

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Speaker 2: and damage fund, whereby you know, richer countries simply pull

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Speaker 2: money and put into this fund and it's paid out

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Speaker 2: whenever crises occur. In the less developed world, there are

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Speaker 2: also other supporting instruments that can be used. Cat bonds

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Speaker 2: is one of them. Parametric insurance in a modest ways

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Speaker 2: another one of them. There are also certain debt clauses

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Speaker 2: that were countries that have a very high level of

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Speaker 2: debt in use. So, for example, Grenada recently was able

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Speaker 2: to in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl causing a lot

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Speaker 2: of damage, there was able to defer interest payments on

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Speaker 2: their debt for a couple of years and that gives

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Speaker 2: them some temporary relief to allow them to rebuild after

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Speaker 2: the hurricane hit and continue their interest payments two years

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Speaker 2: down the road.

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Speaker 1: And these countries typically have quite a lot of debt,

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Speaker 1: and so they are paying a good chunk of money.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's ten percent twenty percent of their GDP that

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Speaker 1: is being paid in just interest payments for the debt

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Speaker 1: they've taken on. So getting a pause allows them to

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Speaker 1: have sort of cash in hand immediately to help with recovery.

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Speaker 1: It does seem like finance can help deal with some

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Speaker 1: of the climate damages that are coming, and yet at

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Speaker 1: the same time, it's also showing that there are limits

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Speaker 1: to financial instruments for how far they can go to

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Speaker 1: deal with a worsening crisis.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the issue here is that a lot of these

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Speaker 2: insurance based products are sort of based in the Western

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Speaker 2: style of a market driven product, right, and climate risk

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Speaker 2: is not as amenable to being solved by some of

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Speaker 2: these instruments because it's a risk that's escalating. There's a

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Speaker 2: great deal of uncertainty. The insurance payments that poorer countries

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Speaker 2: need to make aren't always affordable by them. They're already indebted,

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Speaker 2: as you pointed out. So these market driven solutions that

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Speaker 2: the Western world has used for decades, very very well

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Speaker 2: and has really been a very efficient tool. Doesn't quite

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Speaker 2: cut it in the poorer parts of the world.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Gotham, and I hope that people will read

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Speaker 1: the Uncovered series that you and colleagues across Bloombergreen have

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Speaker 1: been reporting on both the potential but limits of insurance

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Speaker 1: to protect against climate change.

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Speaker 2: Thank you. Actually, it's been a pleasure being on your show.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Zero. And now for the

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Speaker 1: sound of the week that is Hurricane Milton making a landfall.

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Speaker 1: If you like this episode, please take a moment to

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Speaker 1: rate or review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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Speaker 1: You can get in touch at Zero pod at Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: dot net. Zero's producer is might Lee Raw. Bloomberg's head

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Speaker 1: of podcast is Sage Bowman, and head of Talk is

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Speaker 1: Brendan Nunan. Our theme music is composed by Wonderly Special

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Speaker 1: thanks to Aaron Rudkoff, Showan Wagner, Jessica beck Ethan's Time

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Speaker 1: Berth and Monique Mulima. I am a SHAPRTI back so