Insure Our Future panel at the Global Climate Action Summit on September 11, 2018

Panel Description:
Insurance companies are supposed to protect us from catastrophic risks and have enormous influence on how quickly the world can transition to clean energy. Yet when it comes to the largest threat to humanity - climate change - many insurers are fueling a dangerous future through their investments in and underwriting of fossil fuels. Things are beginning to change. Over the past 18 months some of the world's largest insurance companies have begun to take action -- pledging to end insurance of coal and tar sands projects and divesting their investment portfolios of coal and tar sands. Come learn about the important role U.S. insurance could play in decarbonizing the economy and what insurance regulators and civil society can do can do to help speed the transition to clean energy. Light appetizers as well as beer and wine will be served.
Panelist Bios:
Dave Jones, California Insurance Commissioner, was first elected Insurance Co mmissioner on November 2, 2010 and re-elected November 4, 2014. Jones leads the California Department of Insurance and regulates the California insurance market. Insurers collect $310 billion a year in premiums in California, making it the nation's largest insurance market.
Sylvain Vanston is a member of the AXA Group’s Sustainability, Public Affairs and Insurance Foresight team. His team is in charge of integrating Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk factors into the AXA Group’s product development, risk management and investment processes, as well as generate new policy developments. He also handles relationship with analysts and rating agencies and oversees the Group’s ESG reporting strategy as well as its environmental management. Sylvain’s academic background is in International Relations (Sciences Po Paris, London School of Economics). He started his career in Public Relations, then finance and SRI analysis.
Michael Mattoch, JD, LLM, MBA, Counsel & Advocate for Consumer Watchdog, has spent his civilian career crafting public policy from a 360 degree perspective as a financial services regulator, key state legislative counsel, gubernatorial appointee, and senior insurance executive and counsel at USAA. Mr. Mattoch is recognized for his comp rehensive knowledge and experience in regulatory, legislative, and corporate activity relative to the state, national and global economy and its impact on our environment.
Lindsey Allen, Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network, has more than a decade of experience pressuring and inspiring some of the world’s largest corporations to protect rainforests, human rights and the climate. A veteran environmental and social justice organizer, Lindsey has spent her career preventing commodity expansion into globally critical forest areas and driving RAN's work to push the financial industry out of fossil fuels.
Peter Bosshard directs the Sunrise Project's finance program and coordinates the global Unfriend Coal campaign. A native of Switzerland, he has worked to incorporate environmental, social and human rights norms into the financial sector for more than three decades.