Understanding, evaluating, and avoiding or mitigating risk is a key component of any investment decision, and for forest assets it is no different. The difficulty lies where investors don’t understand (and often have inaccurate perceptions) of the risks associated with forest assets. Today, we’re joined by Gordon Steward, of Dual – Managing Director of Forestry. In our conversation, Gordon walks us through the ‘supply chain’ if you will of the insurance industry as it relates to his work with forests. He speaks to the most common geographies where forest insurance is prevalent and why, and describes the importance of sound forest management in reducing risk and making your assets more insurable.
Host: Shauna Matkovich - The Forest Link
Timecode
Details
00:07 Introduction to Gordon and Dual
03:07 How Dual insures forest assets - an NGA
04:09 The effect of climate change & forest fires
09:12 Biggest risks that concern investors
11:00 Fire or risk management plans are crucial
14:21 Carbon investment groups
15:44 Players in forestry insurance marketplace
15:43 Under pressure to make return for investors
21:04 Get the technical underwriting rate back to where it should be
22:58 Insurance classes and loss ratios
27:45 Financial insurance triggers to lessen the exposure to risk when investing in carbon products
28:24 Fire insurance cover
30:40 Legislation to protect nature and Indigenous people’s land rights
32:29 The use of trees
35:19 Final advice
[24:30] “Forestry is a very what I term spiky business, so it is prone to catastrophic fire losses.”
[32:29] “The use of trees in so many industries and processes is quite unbelievable.”
[33:05] “Wood is so strong, and we make composites so strong now, it is stronger than bricks, it is much lighter and it is carbon friendly.”
Dual: https://www.dualgroup.com/