MS Amlin backs NDF as climate resilience model targets scale

MS Amlin’s $50m commitment to the Natural Disaster Fund (NDF) is intended to help turn climate resilience in emerging markets from bespoke projects into a scalable commercial re/insurance opportunity, with ambitions to bring in more capital over time.

The Lloyd’s re/insurer has joined Hannover Re as a commercial capacity provider to the NDF, which was established with backing from the UK and German governments and is managed by Global Parametrics, part of CelsiusPro Group.

“This is not just about more capacity,” says Amir Sethu, chief sustainability officer at MS Amlin.

“We’re not just writing a cheque. We’re offering a vote of confidence in an asset class the market is only just beginning to understand.”

Sethu says MS Amlin combines the benefits of its Lloyd’s platform, including capital, rating strength and a global licensing network, with the advantages of being part of the wider MS&AD Group, which provides access to distribution channels, a $25bn balance sheet and operations in more than 40 countries.

Mark Rueegg, founder and CEO of CelsiusPro Group, says the NDF combines risk capacity with structuring support and capacity building, including funding to kickstart new insurance schemes.

“Public-private partnership and funds from governments means that we are less exposed to cycles, because governments look after their long-term mandate first and foremost, rather than quarterly underwriting results. That allows us to take a different approach.”

Sethu says that diversification is particularly relevant as the broader reinsurance market softens.

“We believe the NDF is successfully building a model that’s structurally diversified from day one. Demand is driven by things like government priorities, multilateral funding and aid budgets, as opposed to market softening or hardening, and that’s a unique diversification benefit.”

The NDF’s portfolio spans the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Its 2025 impact report records 40 transactions at risk across 70 countries, with $61.6m of payouts since 2018. “It’s as diversified as it gets around the globe, and we are adding new clients, countries and perils,” Rueegg says.

Presenting the commercial case

Sethu is clear that MS Amlin sees the commercial opportunity, despite the initiative’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials. “We firmly believe adaptation, resilience and disaster risk reduction isn’t just a development sector or ESG story,” he says. “It represents the next big commercial growth market for specialty insurance and reinsurance.”

He cites an annual adaptation finance gap of around $300bn, arguing that public money alone cannot bridge it.

“You close it by making the commercial case irresistible to private capital,” Sethu says.

Rueegg sees the NDF’s technical assistance function as important in moving successful concepts towards standardised products. “It’s about setting templates, testing what works, continuing with or improving the ones that are successful, and replicating this,” he says. “We don’t need to invent everything from scratch every time.”

That approach is already being applied to projects including parametric drought cover for women smallholder farmers in India and multi-country drought protection for Tearfund, while Rueegg says CelsiusPro is also exploring applications around nature-based solutions and carbon markets.

For Sethu, a bigger prize is for such structures to graduate into mainstream underwriting appetite as the industry confronts increasingly interconnected and systemic risks.

“If we don’t break that cycle, we compromise the investability of significant parts of the global economy,” he says. “And if we don’t learn how to underwrite adaptation and systemic risk, we risk being good at insuring yesterday’s problems.”