Consumer and environmental groups said yesterday that the nation's insurance regulators should drop plans for a climate change impact model regulation that would allow carriers to keep data secret.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners are better off taking no action rather than adopting a model regulation that does not publicly disclose all of an insurer's knowledge of climate change risk, said 12 groups.

The organizations, part of Ceres (the Center for Economic Justice and Natural Resources Defense Council), said they reject the NAIC's Aug. 15 proposal for climate risk disclosure because it would make portions of the disclosure confidential in deference to insurance carriers' concerns.

NAIC's Climate Risk Disclosure Working Group has proposed a questionnaire that would ask insurers to assess their climate emissions risk and the efforts by the company to curb its global warming emissions as well as efforts to curb clients' emissions.

During the NAIC's May meeting, insurance industry representatives said that total disclosure would reveal proprietary company information and could also be a basis for legal action.

Ceres said the aim of the disclosures must be "substantive, specific and public," and the current proposal--making some of the answers confidential--would defeat that purpose.

"We urge the working group to revise the current proposal by making the responses to all questions, including questions seven, eight and nine, public information," the group said in its comments.

"If the working group is unwilling to make the responses to all questions public, we then urge the working group to take no action on climate risk disclosure and leave any such activity to individual states," said Ceres.

A spokeswoman for the Kansas City, Mo.-based NAIC said the comments submitted by Ceres are part of general comments requested by the working group on the proposed model regulation.

The working group will be meeting at the end of this month during the NAIC's national meeting to discuss these and other comments. At that time, it would decide what the working group's next move would be, she said. There would be no additional comment at this time, she added.

The third draft version in contention, under questions seven, eight and nine asks insurers what they know about how global climate change will affect them and their solvency, the geographical location of the impact, and what actions they have taken to protect their capital positions.

The working group noted that the goal of the form is to provide regulators, insurers and the public "with substantive information about the risks posed by climate change to insurers and the actions insurers are taking in response to their understanding of climate change risk."

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Consumer Group Irked By NAIC Climate Change Disclosure Plan

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