The Global Risk and Resilience Fellowship (GRRF)

Selecting cities is a multi-step process that firstly, involves all organizers (R-Cities, Howden, and other insurance groups), and secondly, depends on the capacities and interest of the city offices and matching each city’s profile with suitable insurance expertise. The first stage will be an Open Call application. Following this, the key stakeholders in Howden, Resilient Cities Network and each city office will have a call to discuss the requirements of the city and focus of its resilience strategy. Cities that already have a resilience strategy and team in place and are able to promote a seamless integration of the fellow and will be prioritized in the allocation of fellows.

Once the cities are selected, R-Cities and Howden will identify fellows – these will be insurance experts who have an appropriate skillset for each selected city. Each fellow will have deep knowledge of the context of the city in which they will be seconded and the resilience risks it faces. The details (e.g., duration, timing, objectives) of the placement will be finalized after the cities have been selected as they will be agreed in conjunction with each of the selected city offices.

Because this is a partnership, we will come to a three-way agreement that satisfies the needs of all parties involved. However, we will eventually need a signed letter of acknowledgement from city mayors/leaders.

This is to be determined on a case-by-case basis. There will be detailed discussions and programmatic development before the cohort begins. We anticipate most fellows will be physically located in the city offices, which we recommend to maximize interaction and communication over the three-to-six-month program. However, as with many fellowship programs there may be versions where they sit outside the office.

Each placement will be unique to the city context, however, one of the main objectives of the fellowship is to support the CROs and their team to advance their existing and planned resilience work on behalf of the city. Where and how fellows work will vary from city-to-city. We will share learnings from the structure of each fellow with the network, as part of a broader program of knowledge sharing from the fellowship.

The focus of each fellow will be collaboratively determined by the requirements of the city and agreed at the outset of the secondment. We recommend a role that enables the fellow to maximize interaction and communication over the three-to-six-month program, as this will enable them to best understand the urban issues currently being faced in their cities, and to support the CRO and their team to create insurance-based strategies that help address said issues.

All expenses of the fellows are paid for by the insurance organization that they are employed by.

Fellows will be placed within their selected cities for a total of three-to-six months.

The first three fellows to be seconded in Q1 2023 will be Howden professionals. However, in following years we expect to include fellows from different insurance organizations.

We expect the first three fellows to be placed in Q1 2023. These early-placed fellows will help organizers evaluate and measure programmatic lessons, to be applied moving forward. In following years, we expect to increase the number of fellows per year, but the expansion process will heavily depend on what works for cities within the network.

At the outset of the fellowship, city offices, Howden and R-Cities will agree on objectives for the fellow. These will be based on the cities’ short and long-term resilience objectives. The achievement of these objectives, as well as a broader qualitative review at the end of each secondment, will be used to determine the impact of each fellow.

It is well understood that insurance can pick up the pieces when things go wrong, with parametric policies increasingly being used to address emerging climate-related risk, such as droughts, floods and extreme weather. However, we are just scratching the surface on how risk transfer solutions can unlock and accelerate the development of the technology and infrastructure projects that cities need to implement in order to adapt to the kinds of resilience challenges they will face as global temperatures continue to rise.

In the face of mounting shocks and stresses, cities face the enormous and urgent task of adapting to a more volatile world. The insurance industry has a huge role to play in smoothing out this volatility and building resilience.

Each fellow will be an insurance practitioner who has deep knowledge of the context of the city in which they will be seconded and the resilience risks it faces. The fellows’ combined skill-set and regional know-how will enable them to dive into the urban issues currently being faced in their cities and create insurance-based strategies that help address said issues. In addition, fellows will be part of a growing network of resilience insurance professionals created by this fellowship program and they will have access to solutions and strategies being tried elsewhere.

Aligned to the mission and practice of R-Cities, part of the impact of the fellowship program is to share knowledge and experience between cities that are facing similar resilience issues, and to take note of different insurance solutions. This could take the form of a workshop, conference or other similar event, with the information to be integrated into city resilience strategies moving forward, whether the cities were part of the fellowship program or not.

Success involves equipping cities with a greater variety of tools to tackle mounting shocks and stresses. The fellowship aims to enable city officials to understand how they can best employ insurance and risk transfer to smooth out volatility and build resilience. It also seeks to provide the insurance market with a deeper understanding of the impact of a warming world on cities, better equipping it to innovate and evolve to effectively respond to new risks and to develop solutions that remove barriers to resilience-building investments.

Success involves equipping cities with a greater variety of tools to tackle mounting shocks and stresses. The fellowship aims to enable city officials to understand how they can best employ insurance and risk transfer to smooth out volatility and build resilience. It also seeks to provide the insurance market with a deeper understanding of the impact of a warming world on cities, better equipping it to innovate and evolve to effectively respond to new risks and to develop solutions that remove barriers to resilience-building investments.