CA FWD and Insurance for Good Partner to Improve Community and Household Climate Risk Management
Sacramento, California, Sept. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- California Forward (CA FWD) and Insurance for Good announce they have launched a partnership aimed at developing sustainable funding and financing mechanisms for climate risk reduction at both the community and household levels.
Climate-related disasters—such as wildfires, flooding, and extreme heat—pose a significant and increasing risk to communities across the country. As private insurance markets pull back or withdraw altogether from high-risk areas, governments are increasingly stepping in as insurers of last resort. Unlike private actors, local governments cannot opt out of safeguarding communities, providing essential services, and rebuilding after natural disasters. This means that effective management of increasing climate risks is necessary to safeguard government financial health, insurance market stability, and community safety and wellbeing.
There are a number of strategies and measures that can be taken to lessen the damage and negative impacts of climate change-fueled natural disasters, such as home hardening and creating defensible space to protect against wildfires, building flood control projects, and restoring natural systems that buffer communities from harm.
The partnership aims to clarify how different funding and financing tools across sectors and scales can fit together to develop a solid framework for climate adaptation and resilience investments, including the role of insurance in such strategies.
“Communities are carrying the costs of climate disasters, and governments can’t walk away when private markets pull back due to increasing climate risk,” says Nuin-Tara Key, CA FWD’s Executive Director of Programs. “This partnership is about making sure we have practical, long-term tools to manage those risks, including tools that protect households, stabilize public budgets, and allow California’s economies to grow and thrive in the face of climate change. By working with Insurance for Good and partners across finance, insurance, investment, and more, we’re building a framework that rewards communities for investing in resilience and builds greater connectivity between regional priorities and action and the capital flows needed to sustain it.”
“The only long-term solution to stressed insurance markets is lowering the underlying risk,” says Carolyn Kousky, founder of Insurance for Good. “As climate change continues to drive up the costs of many disasters, insurability requires resilience investments at both the structure and community scale.”
Specifically, the partnership aims to discover and advise on:
- How local revenue structures can be leveraged to support new funding sources that drive better economic incentives across the economy, especially through insurance and other capital investment flows.
- How insurers, capital providers, and rating agencies can assign measurable economic benefits of resilience action in both their underwriting and pricing.
- The regulatory or policy solutions that are needed at the state and local levels.
The partnership builds on a convening in May 2025 with a diverse group of stakeholders to explore how insurance markets can better reflect investments in risk reduction made by communities and their residents.
The partnership has convened a workgroup that brings together experts from across municipal finance, adaptation and risk reduction, insurance, banks, and lending institutions to produce an actionable guidebook that outlines replicable financing strategies for risk mitigation. Insurance for Good and CA FWD will hold a workshop to inform the guidebook at its 2025 California Economic Summit in Stockton, California, on October 22. This session will explore how to move from a dependence on one-time grant funding for resilience to long-term and sustained investment models.
Workgroup members include:
- Nuin-Tara Key, Executive Director of Programs, California Forward
- Carolyn Kousky, Founder, Insurance for Good
- Jainey Bavishi, Senior Fellow, University of Miami Climate Resilience Institute
- Ricardo Bayon, Partner, Encourage Capital
- Francis Bouchard, Managing Director for Climate, Marsh McLennan
- Kayla Calkins, Chief of Staff & Director of Strategic Partnerships, Megafire Action
- Kusi Hornberger, Partner, Dalberg Capital
- Shayne Kavanagh Senior Manager of Research, Government Finance Officers Association
- Zach Knight, Co-Founder & CEO, Blue Forest Conservation
- John Moon, President, LISC Green
- Fran Moore, Associate Professor, UC Davis
- Michael Newman, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety
- Kyra Payton, Senior Innovation Manager, CSAA Insurance Group
- Matt Posner, Head of Public Finance, The Resiliency Company
- Laurie Schoeman, Chief Investment and Impact Officer, Partners for the Common Good
- Shalini Vajjhala, Executive Director, PreCollective
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California Forward (CA FWD) is a multi-partisan, non-profit organization building a New California Economy that is sustainable, resilient, and inclusive. We support economic growth using a regions-up approach, stewarding state resources, and building resilience in the face of a changing economy and climate. This ongoing work is done in collaboration with diverse partners—including our California Stewardship Network and leaders from business, community, government, labor, and more. We convene annually at our California Economic Summit, where we work with these partners and others to continue improving and developing programs, policies, resources, and solutions for a truly sustainable economic model.
Insurance for Good is a non-profit organization serving as the base for a growing community of practice working to harness risk transfer for the common good. We support communities and policymakers with trusted resources, capacity building, innovation, and partnerships to improve policy and regulation. Insurance for Good's goal is to increase resilience, enable equitable recoveries, speed the energy transition, and leverage nature-positive approaches. Learn more at www.insuranceforgood.org.
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Sarah Walsh California Forward (CA FWD) 916-491-0022 sarah@cafwd.org
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