Previous Columns

Capital markets priced APAC physical climate risk decades before Beijing's disclosure mandate arrives, and the companies caught between the two ledgers carry loss that neither has named.

Q1 2026's $68.5 billion cat bond record ran almost entirely on US perils while Munich Re forecast rising typhoon frequency in the western Pacific, pulling capital and risk apart.

Kalmaegi killed nearly 200 people in the Philippines while the cat bond market cleared $10 billion; the protection gap is a product design failure, not a capital shortage.

APAC's insured share of $65 billion in 2025 losses sits at eight percent while cat bond markets hit records; the capital and the protection gap are in different books.

Asia-Pacific took $65 billion in catastrophe losses last year and insured eight percent; the ratio has held for a decade because the gap is a choice, not an accident.