Editor’s comment: Damned if you do and damned if you don’t

For businesses and ventures it is no different. Firms set out to change the world, especially those headed by staff who have run or started business before, or those who have worked in firms where they believe it doesn’t work and they can see another way. No start-up business sets out to be hampered by legacy systems or to get hung up on existing issues.

Yet last year both our oldest market Lloyd’s and one of our newer entrants Convex came under fire for getting it wrong on climate change. Convex for refusing to rule out cover for Australia’s Adani Carmichael coal mine – which activists say will emit 4.6 billion tonnes of CO2 – when more than 40 other major insurers have.

For Post it is standard to try and get an exclusive interview with the head of any start-up and this month’s cover interview has been almost two years in the making. Yet the issues and controversy that have come with Convex’s reluctance to distance itself from the project made us hesitate to give this interview with CEO Stephen Catlin the prominence we usually would. As an independent voice the magnitude of the crisis made us question if we should be pushing the agenda, if we should refuse to give it a voice or if the opportunity to answer the question was essential. The latter won out. 

Climate change was top of the agenda last year as COP26 came to Glasgow. Plans were made but even for governments large steps towards the 1.5 degree goal set by the Paris Agreement are still too much.

Greenpeace itself posed these questions after the COP26 event: “Did COP26 make things better than they were before? Did it create some good foundations to build on? Or did it create new problems that will need to be untangled later?”

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if 2022 is the year Lloyd’s and Convex will move a little bit closer to that best version of themselves.