Rachel Delhaise, Chief Sustainability Officer: Convex: Insurance’s critical role in global resilience (402)

Introduction 

In this episode, Matthew Grant speaks with Rachel Delhaise, Chief Sustainability Officer at Convex, about what climate sustainability really looks like inside a modern insurance business. 

While attention may have shifted elsewhere, the underlying challenges have not gone away. Rachel offers a clear view of how insurers are continuing to respond through underwriting decisions, risk modelling and long-term investment thinking. 

Rachel joined Convex in the early stages of the business to build its sustainability approach from the ground up. Her role spans three core areas: identifying opportunities in the transition, strengthening how climate risk is understood and managed and supporting cutting-edge carbon science research. Together, these reflect a broader shift in how insurers are positioning themselves as active participants in enabling change. 

The conversation explores how insurance is supporting emerging technologies such as carbon capture and storage, where underwriting plays a critical role in making projects viable. Rachel also shares how the industry is approaching increasingly complex risks, from wildfire to flood, in a world where historical data is no longer a reliable guide. 

Drawing on her experience across underwriting, investment and industry collaboration, she explains why the fundamentals of risk still matter, even as new tools and models emerge. She also highlights the growing influence of insurance thinking across the wider financial system, as banks and investors begin to grapple with physical climate risk in more sophisticated ways. 

At the heart of the discussion is a simple but important idea: insurance has a unique ability to enable progress, but only if it is brought into the conversation early and used intelligently. 

In this conversation, Rachel shares: 

• Why sustainability remains a core strategic priority, even as public attention fluctuates  
• How insurers are supporting the transition through underwriting and investment, not just policy statements  
• What it takes to insure emerging areas like carbon capture and storage  
• Why pricing, rather than capacity, is often the real constraint in renewable energy insurance  
• How insurers are adapting to climate risk with limited historical data  
• Why understanding exposure and vulnerability is still fundamental to modelling future risk  
• What the protection gap reveals about global resilience and economic stability  
• How insurance expertise is shaping how banks and investors assess climate risk  
• Why involving insurers earlier can significantly improve the success of large projects  

Rachel’s recommendations 

• Podcast: Fossil vs Future  
• Book: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson 

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