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Extreme Weather, Extreme Costs: Building Malawi’s Financial Resilience in a Changing Climate

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Date
2025-01-30
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2025-01-30
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Climate risk management in Malawi's financial sector is a pressing issue that demands immediate attention. Globally, the urgency of addressing climate change is escalating, and many African countries are taking proactive steps to mitigate its financial implications. Kenya, Tanzania, and Morocco, among others, have already implemented supervisory guidelines for climate risk management to safeguard their financial systems and economies. The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM), recognizing the critical importance of this issue, has similarly initiated the development of climate risk supervisory guidelines for banks and are considering doing the same for the insurance sector. To inform these policy efforts, RBM, with the support of the World Bank, conducted this assessment to better understand the impacts of climate change on the insurance and banking sectors in Malawi. This report’s analysis is the first of its kind for Malawi, and one of the first climate-related financial risk analyses in the Africa region that looks at the impact of climate change on the insurance sector in addition to the banking sector. The ultimate objective of this report is to build a roadmap for RBM to better assess and manage climate-related financial risks for banks and insurers.
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“Reserve Bank of Malawi; World Bank. 2025. Extreme Weather, Extreme Costs: Building Malawi’s Financial Resilience in a Changing Climate. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42746 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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