I RETURNED last week from Tokyo, where the 31st East Asian Insurance Congress (EAIC) brought together insurers, reinsurers, regulators and business leaders from across the region for three days. I came home with a message I want to share with the Filipino insuring public: the industry, at home and across Asia, is organizing to close the wide gap between the disasters we suffer and the protection we actually carry.
The congress returned to the city where it was born in 1964, the fourth time Tokyo has hosted it, under the theme “Back to the Origin, A Bridge to the Future.” What began 62 years ago as a small circle of insurance leaders meeting “to exchange ideas, build relationships and advance our industry” has grown into one of Asia’s most enduring insurance gatherings. Much of its value, as our hosts reminded us, lies in the conversations held off the stage as much as on it.
Underinsurance takes center stage
EAIC president Sally Wan set the tone at the opening. “Many families and businesses across Asia [are] underprotected,” she said, calling underinsurance both a social responsibility and a commercial opportunity. Closing the gap, she argued, requires making protection “simpler, more accessible, more relevant.” And because climate risk and technological change cross borders, “no one market can meet them alone.”
Listening to her, I thought of home. Few countries have more at stake in that conversation than the Philippines. An estimated 98 percent of our catastrophe losses are uninsured, against a global average of 58 percent. For every P100 lost to a typhoon or earthquake, roughly P98 is borne by families, businesses and government. Insurance penetration remains below 1.9 percent of GDP, and fewer than 1 in 5 households carry any disaster-related property cover. Last year’s succession of typhoons, Opong, Nando, Paolo, Tino and Uwan, caused more than P5 billion in losses across the Philippines.
Pairing resilience with finance
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike offered a model worth studying. The city’s Tokyo Resilience Project combines large underground flood reservoirs with financial instruments, including what she described as the world’s first internationally certified resilience bond. “Providing peace of mind is the core value of the insurance industry,” she said, “and it is also what Tokyo seeks to deliver.”
That idea of building infrastructure and insuring it at the same time is already taking root in our country. Our Department of Finance and Japan’s Ministry of Finance co-chairman a technical working group that treats disaster insurance as a strategic investment rather than a cost. The proposed Seadrif-SAFE facility would build risk protection into the financing of our public infrastructure.
The toolkit already works
What encouraged me most is that the tools to close the gap exist, and several have already proven themselves here.
Our World Bank-issued sovereign catastrophe bond, the first in Southeast Asia, paid the national government $52.5 million after Super Typhoon Odette breached its wind trigger. Parametric covers like it release funds within days rather than months.
At the household level, microinsurance is moving beyond life and motor cover into homes. Some plans sold through pawnshops and microfinance networks now offer payouts of up to P20,000 against fire, typhoon, flood and earthquake for annual premiums as low as P250.
Regionally, the Southeast Asia Disaster Risk Insurance Facility (Seadrif), backed by Asean states, the World Bank and Japan, keeps innovating. Last year, it paid Laos $2 million just six days after that country’s final disaster impact report. In March, Seadrif and the Asean AHA Center agreed to share disaster data, which will support faster, prearranged payouts. Seadrif is also working with the Food and Agriculture Organization and six Asean countries on an agricultural risk facility, which matters greatly for our farmers.
Carrying the conversation forward
The congress also named its leadership for the next edition, to be held in Bangkok in 2028, under incoming president Koji Takahashi of Japan and vice president Dr. Somporn Suebthawilkul of Thailand. I am grateful to have been asked to serve on its executive board. I see it as a chance to keep Philippine concerns on the regional agenda and to bring home what our neighbors are learning.
A bridge to the future
The congress theme fits our situation well. Our exposure to disaster is not new, but the means of meeting it are: parametric triggers, sovereign risk transfer, regional pools and affordable home cover delivered through channels Filipinos already trust. The remaining work is to scale these tools faster than the next typhoon season. After a week in Tokyo, I am more confident than ever that our region’s insurers are committed to that work, and that we are doing it together.